


The Consequences of Trust

by sparrow_hubris (lezzerlee)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: inception_kink, M/M, Mental Breakdown, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, Violence, dream death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-25
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:59:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 43,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lezzerlee/pseuds/sparrow_hubris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A job goes irreparably off track, and Eames is forced to beat Arthur to death in a dream. Neither of them knew the consequences his actions would have.</p><p>Originally for <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/13659.html?thread=30172763#t30172763">this prompt</a> at <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink">Inception Kink</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Consequences of Trust

**Author's Note:**

> This fic draws from real life experience in some cases for me, so you might see quick notes interspersed between chapters, if you care to read. Originally this fic was separated into two stories, one from Arthur's point of view, and the other from Eames'. I've combined them, in order of timeline, for this posting.
> 
> It's been edited by myself, but otherwise mostly unbeta'd. if you see any mistakes, feel free to point them out.

He's pinned with his back against the wall, a vice like grip on his wrist, and a strong shoulder pressed hard against his chest. He can't smell anything but the spice of the other man's sweat and cologne as he hyperventilates into the bared neck before him.

It's so overwhelming that he can't decide if he wants to kill, faint, or throw up. The nausea spikes, and he thinks it will probably be the latter. It takes everything he has to not burst into tears and beg. Imagining himself stuttering, mumbling please, please, please over and over again — _Please stop. Don't you know you are killing me? Over and over, every night. Please stop, please stop!_ — it takes a second to realize he's actually saying it out loud. His whispers are desperate, choked and uncontrolled, but he isn't released from the hold. Instead Eames pulls closer, wrapping the arm not holding his wrist behind him and hugging his head tight.

Arthur vaguely remembers a time when he could have already disemboweled someone five different ways from this position.

"Oh, Arthur. What have I done to you?" is whispered into his ear.

***

He doesn't like this job. Arthur never likes jobs involving organized crime. Corporations might have better resources to hunt you down after a failed contract, but at least their memory is short. Given enough time, corporations will either deem you not worth their effort, or they’ll re-hire you to pay your debt. They are adept at realizing who's an asset and who isn't, even if you have burned them in the past. Corporations are willing to look the other way in the higher interests their business. If you can outrun the target on your back for long enough, you'll find yourself back in their good graces eventually. This is especially true when you are the best at what you do.

Criminals, on the other hand, never forget. They may let things slide temporarily, giving off the illusion of forgiveness to put their greater business needs ahead of petty vengeance. But with them, there's nothing more perilous than time and old wounds. You can be assured that somewhere down the line you'll get a knife slipped through your ribs, or a bullet in your head in the name of honor and retribution. It doesn't matter how much you've done for them, they'll only remember the one time you let them down.

Sometimes, you just have to take the job that’s given. It's been years since Fischer’s inception, and though Arthur has invested his money wisely, some of his team has not. 

Arthur isn't anything if not loyal, so when _members_ of the Inception team need work to pay off their gambling habits, Arthur finds them work.

It's a job. It's the only job paying well right now, so Arthur takes it. He knows it's best to keep track of who's side you've screwed over, whose blood war you're getting involved in, and if anyone on your team has pissed of the wrong people coming into a job. Arthur checks Eames’ connections at least a dozen times before he's satisfied that they’re in the clear. He doesn't like bringing Ariadne on a job like this, but he needs someone with a clean slate, someone whose past he doesn't have to worry when he has to search out Eames’ and their current extractor Jackson's entire criminal history. Besides, she'll remain topside and the mark will never see her face. It's a feeble justification, he knows, but time is of the essence and he's got enough to worry about.

They have one shot at getting Ulrich Weiss under. Arthur has taken on dangerous marks before, but Weiss makes him especially nervous. Saito had been a gamble, once upon a time, and it had only been luck, or fate, or some generous offering from the universe that he and Cobb came out on top of that one. Saito auditioning them was really godsend, because right now they wouldn't be alive if that hadn't been the case.

Weiss is so much worse. He's not nearly as powerful, but he's also not nearly as sane. Saito is a businessman—a ruthless one, but one who bows graciously to logic and necessity. Weiss is a loose cannon and a borderline sociopath, though Arthur could never pin a crime directly on his hands. His decisions for the organization leave a trail of blood, and anger seems to fuel these decisions more than Arthur can appreciate. 

Their client needs assurance that Weiss is stable enough deal with. It's not like the client has a clean record, but they're more practical and business driven than Weiss appears to be. Arthur should just tell them not to get involved based on his instinct alone, but they know what he knows so far and they still want more information. They want to know just how dangerous Weiss can be, and if he can make the kind of hard decisions that will ultimately make everyone more money. They want to know if he'll go off the deep end and screw them over. 

Besides, the team needs to get paid.

If Arthur is honest with himself, which he often is, he knows that he wants a challenge as well. It seems like jobs lately don't live up to inception. It's not surprising, really. Arthur misses the thrill. As much as he doesn't like this job, he's getting the same sense of danger he used to have and that has been lacking from every job he's performed since Cobb talked everyone into doing the impossible.

So Arthur prepares as thoroughly as possible. Researching all of Weiss' closest contacts, family members and business partners, he catalogues vacations, bank accounts, and criminal connections. He roots out competitors, money laundering, and secret meeting spots. He makes damn sure that Weiss hasn't had his mind militarized; he won't make that mistake again. Arthur pokes holes in every game plan, finding the weaknesses and creating fallbacks. He reins in overreaching ideas into plausible strategy. He leaves no stone unturned, because that's his job.

Arthur finds out that while Weiss' mind may not be militarized, the man is paranoid and violent enough that no matter how they approach it's going to be a challenge. He also finds out that Weiss' right hand man is about the only person that Weiss truly trusts.

Derrick Kohler is a very serious and intimidating man. His stature is enough to put off anybody easily. His subdued and professional manner belies his dangerous nature. He's precise and calm in anything that he does. Any violence suspected on account of Weiss is most certainly carried out by Kohler. And Kohler is smart, because so far he hasn't been caught, and he hasn't been taken out. He's 43 years old; that says a lot for an enforcer in this game. 

Arthur gets a slightly sick feeling thinking about Kohler, knowing his own nature is so similar. He thinks, in another life, that he could be very much like this man. Arthur has taken lives before, not just in dreams, but he doesn't revel in it. He's not that cold. He's thankful for that fact.

Kohler is their in. Eames will forge the man to get close, to get inside information. If they spend enough time in the dream world they can see exactly how Weiss will run his business. Jackson will create varying business and criminal scenarios to test Weiss' reactions. And then they can report, with certainty to their client, just how much of a liability Weiss could be as a partner. It's not a standard extraction, not like how Cobb ran things. But it should work, assuming Weiss still takes the business trip to New York he has planned, and he and Kohler don't catch-on to being tailed. They'll have to be extremely careful about their surveillance—more so than usual.

***

This is not good. 

Arthur is cuffed to a hard-backed chair in the middle of perfect recreation of the run down warehouse Weiss' team uses for holding and shipping. His legs are strapped to the chair with scraps of plastic and rope. It digs uncomfortably in his skin through his trousers.

Arthur shouldn't be here, he should be out helping Jackson set up the rest of the cons and distracting more projections away from the extractor. He'd been ambushed by a set of surprisingly capable dream thugs. He's usually better than that, able to take out nearly anything that comes at him, but Weiss' projections don't play fair. Weiss’ mind is already agitated at the situations they’ve thrown at him so far. And he can't really win when it's twelve on one, even with unlimited ammo. He doesn't know how he's tipped these particular projections off, but if Weiss' red-faced rant taking place behind him about spies and competitors is any indication, it seems Weiss has figured out, on some level, that the team is here.

This situation could, in fact, work in their favor. If Weiss thinks he's taken care of the threat, the projections might back down. Thankfully they're in Jackson's dream so if Arthur dies it won't collapse. Since Jackson is leading Weiss on specific types of business deals, instead of breaking into safes, the projections should stay calm longer.

Weiss ends his rant in a stream of curses, circling around to engage with Arthur directly. The man visibly calms himself, dry popping a pill from a tin can he holds in his hand, adjusting his tie, and shifting his shoulders in his suit jacket. It's an eerie sort of gesture, like he's trying to hold his own skin together. Sweat is beading on Weiss’ forehead and his breathing is ragged, but Weiss pulls a serene mask over his face. It doesn't hide the wild fury in his eyes or the flush of anger under his skin. Arthur refuses to let the shudder crawling down his spine emerge, though he wants to.

"I don't care who you are and you're lucky for that fact, because it means your loved ones are safe." Weiss' says. His hands flutter as if he's conducting a symphony. "On another day, you might not be so lucky. I've killed whole families for less. I don't even care whom you work for. I won't need to know. Because when they find you, whoever you work for, they'll _know_ not to fuck with me again. Do you understand?"

Arthur knows that this is Weiss being kind. His research pulled up the brutal execution of a family in their own apartment. The father had apparently been stealing cocaine from a stash he was holding for Weiss. A mother, father, daughter and young son died that day and nothing could be directly linked to Weiss. Arthur however, refuses to be intimidated. It's just a dream. So he stares impassively at Weiss. 

"Kohler!" Weiss calls. "Get over here. I want you to _take care_ of our guest."

Arthur sees Eames' forge approach. Eames has the large man's steady, purposeful gait down perfectly. His ominous presence carries across the room. Weiss' other lackeys shuffle nervously on their feet. Even as projections in Weiss' own violent mind, they fear Kohler's presence. Eames draws a Berretta from the shoulder holster hidden under his thick, wool pea coat. He calmly raises the gun to Arthur's head ready to end everything now.

"Wait!" Weiss calls as he abruptly stops mid walking away. He spins on his heels with a flourish. "I have something more _fun_ in mind. Phillip, my boy, go fetch me a cinder from outside." Weiss tilts his head forward grinning up through his lashes like a cat looking at his prey as one of the projections goes to grab a brick from the remnants of demolished industrial walls. The knot in Arthur's stomach tightens and he can't force the shiver in his spine away this time.


	2. The Consequences of Trust

The first blow makes his ears ring and he can feel the skin splitting along his temple, scraping away from his bone and filling with grit and dirt. His world becomes one high-pitched noise, one tunnel of focus, one thin line of acute pain. All Arthur sees is bright light and the bleary vision of crimson flecked across the tan linen of his primly pressed pant leg. _This is necessary,_ he reminds himself. It has to be done. Eames' cover can't be blown or the entire team is in jeopardy. Arthur can rationalize this; he can pocket the pain away into the category of job risks willingly suffered for success. _It's just a dream. It's just a dream._

The second blow shatters the bone in cheek. He feels the broken plates shift into his eye socket and sinus cavity. _This is so much worse than being shot in the knee,_ he muses dryly. Blood pours from his gashed skin. Arthur’s teeth surge sharp signals through the nerve roots, searing hot in the roof of his mouth. _Mistake. Not prepared._ His thoughts become frantic flashes, incoherent little snippets of realization.

The third strike detaches his retina. Half his world goes dark. If the pain hadn't taken away his sense of depth, this loss would have. He's vaguely aware of the burning in his wrists as his arms struggle fruitlessly against the restraints in a vain effort to get free from the chair. Arthur can feel the cuffs cutting into his skin, carving as deep as bone, but it does little to deter the instinct to shield himself. Breathing ragged and wet, his lungs try to keep air pumping to his quickly beating heart as adrenaline and fear course through his veins. _How can this hurt so much?_ He thinks. And it's a safer question, he still somehow knows, then asking how Eames can be the one doing it.

Arthur is caught off guard when the next blow is angled upwards, coming from below to smash through the previously untouched side of his jaw. The pain spikes as his body's endorphins run out, unable to override the signals from his nerves. He spits blood and teeth, choking a little as his head lolls backwards on his shoulders. It hurts too much. He can't escape and he wasn't prepared to die so slowly, to feel every blow chip his structure away under his flesh. Blood bubbles in his throat forcing trapped fluid out of his mouth and nose, just rivers of red storming down his broken face.

Arthur knows he must be whimpering because he can hear it hollowly in his ears, overpowering the tinny drone of any background noise and the labored breathing of Eames’ forge. He knows he's losing any semblance of control but he forces one swollen eye open—the one that still sees blearily—in defiance. It’s only to find himself staring directly at the face of Eames' forge. They catch eyes; Arthur swears the deep brown flashes grey for an instant before turning back, cold and impassive again. His heartbeat stutters in his chest as Eames’ hand rises, clutching bloody fingers around an equally bloody brick. It's brought down, but instead of pain, the world goes black.

Arthur wakes and his stomach instantly lurches. He barely has time to turn his head before he violently spills his stomach’s contents onto the carpet. Vision blurry and breathing too hard, Arthur chokes on his tongue as he tries to pull air into his lungs. He wills himself to calm down. His trembling hands clutch the arms of the chair he was sitting in with a white-knuckle grip. A ghost of pain, of the lacerations in the dream, lingers along his wrists. He sucks in desperate gulps of air. _Just breathe. Just breathe. It's okay. Breathe in. Breathe out,_ he thinks.

His eyes are closed but he feels Ariadne is at his side. His skin crawls at her proximity but he's too focused on breathing to react, to push her away. It's been years since he's felt that much pain in the dream. Not since his training when the technology was new and his commanding officers failed to tell him that dying in a dream woke you up. He'd struggled through that first time under in a combat scenario with bullet wounds and broken limbs, only to find himself topside after a knife was ruthlessly thrust into his throat in a final fight.

Arthur’s head is one hot searing mass of over stimulated nerves. His breathing is still ragged and too fast, the oxygen high feeding the pulsing migraine in his head. His teeth grind together and he can't push the pain away. Ariadne's hands are on his wrist and the muted and unintelligible sound that is her voice seems concerned and fearful, though it’s hard to tell behind the sharp burn in his mind. He still can't breathe properly. All his nerves are flaring in pain. He struggles for control and again the world goes black.

When he wakes for the second time, his head still hurts but it's a manageable sort of ache. He slowly peels his eyes open to find that the lights have been turned out. The sun from the window casts a soft glow around the dimmed room. He pulls himself upright in the chair discovering his stomach is an acidic ball of discomfort wrapped in a cocoon of sore muscles. Ariadne is gone, but his vomit has been wiped as best as possible from the carpeted floor. The room still smells sour with bile. The needle from the PASIV has been removed from his wrist but Eames, the mark, and Jackson are still hooked up to the quietly whirring machine.

Arthur leans forward in the chair, running hand over his face and pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, trying his best to will the rest of his headache away. The door clicks open and Arthur's head snaps up, pain flaring again at the movement. He sighs with relief when Ariadne enters the room and curses himself silently because if it had been anyone else he could be dead for real right now.

"Sorry, I went to go get you some food." Ariadne says meekly. He should be angry that she left them defenseless, but he’s secured their position very well. Arthur takes note of the bag in her hands, which is releasing the delicious scent of cheap Chinese takeout. He is actually desperately hungry, his metabolism running overdrive with no food in his stomach.

Arthur must be outwardly projecting his grateful thoughts because Ariadne's expression visibly brightens and she hurries forward with her offering. They sit and eat in relative silence. Ariadne keeps giving him worried glances, but he's too exhausted and lost in his own thoughts to allow her an opening for the questions he knows she's dying to ask.

_How could he do that?_ Arthur keeps thinking as he stabs wooden chopsticks into his sticky box of glazed meat and vegetable stir-fry. But he also thinks that’s a stupid question. Eames had to. Eames had to keep his cover; he had to continue on. But it doesn’t help the way Arthur is feeling right now. So his questions continue to loop in his head.

How could Eames, someone Arthur has trusted his life with, even if he didn't necessarily trust an honest word to come from his mouth, murder him like that? He glances over at the timer and the PASIV only has a few minutes left of the four hours they had planned for. Arthur realizes now that he must have passed out for at least an hour. That sends a pang of worry through him, but he pushes it to the back of his mind and hurries to finish his food so that he can start on removing any evidence of the team from the room. He chances a glance at the dreamers on the beds and his chest constricts as if a vice has been tightened around it. He waits for the timer to run out.


	3. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

Eames doesn't like this job. He never likes working with organized crime. Always tip toeing the line between friend and enemy is nerve wracking. Any small mistake can end with a gunshot to the gut, or cement encasing your feet and water in your lungs.

Going corporate is much easier. Forgers are rare, so businesses usually forgive him quickly for stealing because they'll need him later. Besides, he only steals a little in the grand scheme of things. Criminals, on the other hand, will kill you for swiping a bump of blow without asking. Eames feels they are wound much too tight.

Eames doesn't even need this job. He has money stashed away in an account Arthur doesn't know about yet. But if he's honest with himself—and he always is, because one has to be in order to suppress their personality to forge—he'll admit that he simply wants to work with Arthur again.

It's a bonus that the job is dangerous in a way that no job has been since inception those years ago. He gets a special kind of thrill from the jobs the point man lines up. They’re always difficult, worth the effort, worth his time. Plus, he'll get to see their darling architect again. It's been months since Ariadne has shoved her elbow in his ribs for an offhand comment he’s made, and the last job was much too short, much too easy for both of them.

Eames may be excited, but doesn't _like_ this job. These men are dark. Death is a constant threat on their lips. Oh, Eames has killed before. One can't escape causing death when you’re SAS and thrust into Afghanistan, young and under fire.

He's also been in his fair share of close calls escaping a mark's real life security. But that's war, that’s crime, that’s the job; it's kill or be killed. It isn't enjoyable. Waking up in a cold sweat at night, with bad memories fluttering through your mind, can hardly be considered fun.

Fun challenging himself, pulling out a flawless forge nobody has seen before. Fun is finding just the right words to trick a man into spilling all his deep dark secrets. Fun is making a certain young point man’s lips twitch up at the corners with a barely suppressed smile. 

Eames takes a special glee from drawing out reactions from Arthur. Arthur, who is so professional, so put together, but Eames knows very well that Arthur has a good sense of humor. That each barb Arthur returns is just a scratch on the surface of a mind full of wit and clever sarcasm. Each biting, backhanded compliment is delivered with the intent of keeping Eames on his toes. Eames likes it. He likes the challenge.

This job promises everything that he enjoys, so Eames is willing to push his reservations aside and get down to the nitty gritty details of becoming a man whose entire life is violence.

They’re in the thick of it when something unexpected happens. Eames has to physically stop his eyebrows from shooting to his hairline when a group of men drag Arthur into the warehouse, struggling furiously to free himself. Arthur never gets caught, never _alive_ at least.

They’re in the middle of the dream, Arthur is supposed to be drawing the attention of hostile projections. Their mark, Weiss, is fuming. He’s a violent fellow whose paranoia knows few bounds. His projections are not nice, to say the least, and it was Arthur’s job to draw them out so Jackson, and Eames could work unimpeded.

How Arthur got caught is anyone’s guess. Eames just hopes this doesn’t interfere with the plan. They have three more scenarios to run through before their client will be satisfied enough to pay up, and Eames has no desire to try to nab Weiss again for a second try.

Eames doesn’t envy Arthur right now, that’s for certain. The cuffs that have been snapped around Arthur’s thin wrists look like they’re much too tight. _They always put cuffs on too tight,_ he thinks.

He purses his lips together with a grimace, running his hand through the loose dark locks of his forge. Their mark rants and raves at Arthur who is strapped to a chair. Calm, collected, perfectly poised: Arthur just stares in defiance at the psychopath posturing and flinging curses at him.

Eames wonders what would take to break Arthur. He has a fleeting thought of his own lips, pressed softly against Arthur’s, moaning into the hollow of Eames’ mouth. He pictures Arthur fighting against restraints tied to a headboard as Eames drags his hands lightly down the young man’s chest.

His attention snaps back when his name, his forge’s name, is called out.

“Kohler!” Eames fixes his posture back into that of the imposingly large boulder of a man he’s impersonating. “Get over here. I want you to _take care_ of our guest.”

Eames approaches, pulling his Beretta from his holster, preparing to eject Arthur from the dream. Arthur isn’t the dreamer, so this situation could still work out. He and Jackson can manage three more scenarios before the projections take them out.

He raises the gun to Arthur’s head when the mark calls out again.

“Wait!” Weiss says, spinning on his heels and returning again to address Arthur. “I have something more _satisfying_ in mind.” 

And that sends a cold chill down Eames’ spine. Because this man is nuts, grade A psycho killer. He reminds Eames of movie villains: people who only exist because of the over-caffeinated, ultra-violent musings of desensitized screenwriters; frightening, fictional men who take far too much joy in taking their victims apart bit by bit.

Weiss grins wickedly at Arthur, malice dancing in his eyes as he calls for a brick fetched from the lot outside. Eames’ stomach feels like it nearly drops out of his body.

It’s strange how time bends, how long the moment from realization of what he’s been asked to do, and the actual moment to do it stretches out. The block feels heavy in Eames’ hand. He eyes Arthur warily, assessing where to begin. He wants nothing more than to release Arthur’s binds and to run away from this place, or to end this immediately with a bullet instead.

But he can’t. Eames can’t compromise this job because he feels queasy about murdering his friend in a dream. Arthur seems fine, sitting there defiantly, not showing any emotion at all. Eames can, at the very least, try and make this as speedy as possible.

He swings the brick down hard, aiming for Arthur’s temple, going for soft spots that will give in quickly, will kill quickly. The sound is sickening. The loud pop of contact with hard bone combines with the acidic smell of fresh blood. It takes nearly all the will Eames has to strike again.

If he thought the first blow was awful, the second is worse. Eames can hear the bones break in Arthur’s face. His hands are slick with Arthur’s blood and the wounds he’s inflicting resemble the mice his mum’s cat used to bring in: shredded, bloody, swollen.

Eames swings, again and again, willing Arthur to die, for this to end. He feels sick, on the verge of hyperventilating. His heart is hammering in his chest and he wonders how it can be so heartbreakingly difficult to kill someone when he knows it isn’t real.

He changes the angle, trying to inflict damage somewhere that will at least knock Arthur unconscious. But the attempt fails. Arthur, the infuriating little bastard, is too tough.

Eames can barely hang on to the cinder, his hands are so slippery. His shirtsleeve is soaked through with red. He knows now why Kohler always keeps a change of clothes in his car. The thought makes Eames’ skin itch. 

Then Arthur is struggling, straining against his bindings. He’s whining, whimpering and desperate. There’s only so much pain a man can take. Eames wishes he never found out just what that limit is for Arthur.

Eames wishes, with all his heart, that he could stop this. He wishes he could cradle Arthur in his hands, comfort him, to tell him everything is going to be all right. That this is all going to be over. He wants to take Arthur in his arms and press a gun against the man’s blood-dampened hair and put him out of his misery.

Arthur lets out a pathetic cry. Eames hears the blood curdle in Arthur’s throat, choking him as he struggles to breathe. Eames very nearly drops his forge. He locks eyes with Arthur and his mind goes blank. Everything pinpoints into a silent moment as the world around him fades into the background. He takes in the point man’s bleary, one eyed gaze.

This is gone on long enough— _far too long_. He swings the brick down impossibly hard, harder than he thought he could ever manage. Finally, Arthur crumples. His body goes slack in the chair and Eames all but sighs in relief. Weiss chuckles with delight from across the room.


	4. The Consequences of Trust

Arthur is going to have a panic attack. He hasn’t had one of these since the live ammo obstacle course during basic training, back when he was still very much a kid and had never been shot at before. Well, he hasn’t had a panic attack since then if you don’t count earlier, when he woke from the dream of course, but he’d attributed that to shock. 

The mark is still sedated on the hotel bed, but Jackson and Eames are milling about the room helping to clean. It’s not that Arthur is nervous about getting caught now, or getting out. It’s not that he’s worried that he’d passed out for nearly an hour after getting murdered in the dream, though that still lingers in his mind. It’s the look that Eames gave him upon waking when time on the PASIV ran out. Eames didn’t avert his gaze sheepishly, or apologize, or soften at all. He didn’t have any of the reactions one would expect from someone who regrets their actions. Instead he just stared at Arthur with a cold and calculating gaze until Arthur was forced to look away and retreat to the bathroom for refuge.

Arthur is picturing it now, Eames’ gray eyes sharply focused, lingering for too long like he was trying to take something apart with his mind. That something being Arthur. So Arthur proceeds to wipe the bathroom surfaces of fingerprints while he again struggles to regulate his breathing. It’s becoming the trend of the day, it seems, but he really needs to not black out this time. Weiss won’t be sedated for much longer.

The group clears out minutes later scattering through the city to wait until they can safely return to the safe house. Jackson leaves first and Ariadne quickly after but not without a last worried glance. Arthur appreciates it; he really does, even if it does exasperate him slightly.

Eames lingers uncomfortably long, but he doesn’t say a word. Arthur is always the last one to leave and he wishes Eames would just go already so he can get the fuck out of this room and as far away from Weiss as possible. When Eames finally exits, the tightness in Arthur’s lungs releases. He picks up the PASIV and heads out to wander New York for a while before he has meet with the team and contact their client.

***

It’s been six months since the Weiss job and Arthur hasn’t accepted another. He hasn’t needed to financially, but that’s just an excuse he gives himself for turning every offer down. He’s usually itching for a new prospect after a month at most, but he hasn’t felt the need to take anything on until now. He’s finally restless, but he’s hesitant for some reason. He tries to push that feeling away and finds an easy job.

Arthur works with Ariadne and a fairly new but talented extractor named Wild. If Arthur is a little paranoid, diving into his research more than is probably necessary, he can blame it on being out of the game for longer than usual.

The truth is far from that. Arthur works himself ragged because he doesn’t trust his own research. He doesn’t trust Wild’s game plan. He doesn’t trust not knowing what’s going to happen when he gets the mark down into the dream. Usually Arthur can work with that. His job is to work with criminals, ultimately people he can’t trust, and deal with it. But it’s different this time. And this job was supposed to be easy.

It’s ten at night, Arthur is running through his notes for the millionth time when Ariadne lightly touches his shoulder. Barely suppressing a flinch, he steels himself and turns in his chair to face her.

“Are you okay, Arthur?” she asks. Her fingers are tugging at the fringe of her scarf nervously.

“Yes,” he says curtly. Ariadne hesitates, biting her lip nervously, but eventually she continues.

“You seem a little tense lately.”

“I’m fine,” he insists. Arthur could give her excuses, but she’s too observant for that. It’s better for him to stay silent and just get through this job, so she doesn’t pick his lies apart and try and weasel her way into his problems like she did with Cobb.

“Okay, well, don’t work too late. Even you need sleep.” She hangs her bag off of her shoulder, patting his shoulder lightly, and heads home for the night. 

Arthur wakes that night in a cold sweat, a stifled scream on his lips as incoherent flashes of a nightmare in his mind. Piercing gray eyes penetrate through the turbulence of pain, blood, and fear. He's left with an ache in his chest, an electric pulse through his veins that leaves him feeling hollow and lost.

He had lost the ability to dream naturally years ago. Arthur stares at the walls of his hotel room as his chest contracts with rapid breaths. He hasn't been off of Somnacin long enough for his dreams to return, even with how he's been avoiding work. A sense of forbidding settles over him, sinking into his bones like the chill of a ghost.

***

Arthur doesn’t accept work again for a long time after he completes the extraction with Ariadne. She’s contacted him for a few, but he had been evasive and she’d accepted his excuses when he said he’d been too busy, or the job didn’t pay well enough, or any other lie he could shell out.

The inevitable day comes when Ariadne doesn’t take no for an answer.

“Arthur, I need you. You are the best point man out there and this job, my client… I, I need _you_ Arthur.”

_Shit,_ he thinks.

She sounds scared and Arthur could ask her how she got herself involved in a job like this, but he knows she’s been delving deeper into mind crime over the last few years. She’d been doomed to get in over her head eventually. He’d always promised himself he’d be there for her when she did. A strong sense of loyalty would always connect him to Ariadne. Arthur had been one of her first teachers. He owed it to her to keep her safe.

Arthur was the one picking up Dom's messes back then. But she had done the one thing he couldn't do, he thought couldn’t be done. She'd brought Dom back to reality, she'd helped him get home. Dom was the one who truly owed her, but Arthur was probably the person in the position to pay her back.

“Okay,” he relents, pulling out his laptop to start booking flights. He finds that he actually feels nervous. Ariadne’s compliment about his skills would have been appreciated but shrugged off with modesty before. Now, he doesn’t even feel like he lives up to it. Arthur had barely been able to make it through the last job.

Nobody else noticed just how bad his insomnia had been. He’d even missed details about the mark that came up in the dream. Thankfully, his mistakes didn’t interfere with the extraction, and nobody else caught on. But Arthur noticed.

As he enters his credit card number to buy his tickets to Colombia, Arthur promises himself that he is going to do this job right. He has some worries. _What if they turn on him? What if they leave Ariadne and Arthur high and dry to take the fall? What if he can’t handle the dream?_

It hits him then, the realization of why he’d been avoiding jobs. He is scared of dreaming, of not knowing whom to trust and possibly having to die again. Of getting caught, being trapped, being helpless and scared.

“No,” Arthur whispers out loud to ground himself. He can do this. He _will_ do this. For Ariadne. To prove to himself that he is still capable. That he is fine, and it was just a dream, and it didn’t matter that one of his team members—that Eames—killed him. 

_Because it was just a dream._

***

When Arthur arrives in Colombia he sets about preparing the team’s workspace. He could slap Ariadne for somehow getting involved with the drug cartels. She is a smart girl and should know better. She is also still young and Arthur should have warned her. Either way he is here in the humid city of Bogotá, wearing a linen suit in the subtropical warmth and scouting out a former bookshop to work from.

The lease is inexpensive and the remnants of shelving and furniture gives the team comfort while the barred windows and small entrance room give them privacy. Being on the outskirts of the upper north side of the city also helps. They would look out of place in the slums, but they need to not look overly wealthy as well.

Colombia is a lot safer than it once was, but there is no point in taking unnecessary risks by staying long in nice hotels, giving anyone reason to believe they have something work taking. They don’t need to be robbed on the street, or abducted for ransom. Arthur will be giving up his expensive tailored suits for more manageable and weather friendly clothing as well.

Ariadne arrives soon after Arthur messages her that the space is ready, with Wild in tow. There’s something there between the two that he’ll have to investigate later. But Arthur is too distracted by Ariadne’s state. She’s thinner and paler than usual, which isn’t a good sign. But she looks profoundly relieved to see Arthur.

“Thank you so much, Arthur. I really owe you for this one. I don’t even know how to repay you,” she says.

She’s hugging him tightly as Wild wanders, looking over the workspace. Wild gives a quick handshake as a greeting when Ariadne lets him go.

“It’s not a problem, Ariadne,” he says. “And you don’t, really. How did you manage to get tangled up in this anyway?”

She laughs haltingly, just an exhale, and her smile is short and forced. “One of my clients owes them, and I owe him for a half completed job. I couldn’t back out; this client knows too much about me. He threatened to ‘visit my little brother at his college’ if I didn’t do this for him, for fuck’s sake.” Wild glances over at her frustrated statement, a tight but sympathetic expression on his face.

Arthur frowns as he realizes the situation. “I see.”

Arthur is going to finish this job, and then he’s going to pay this client a visit. Nobody is going to have leverage over Ariadne like this, if he can help it.

“Yeah. I fucked up,” Ariadne sighs, taking Arthur’s silence as admonishment.

“We’ll fix this, Ariadne,” he assures her. “And then I’m going to teach you more about hiding your identity and covering your tracks.”

“Thanks, Arthur. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

Arthur smiles, feeling better than he has in a long time. It’s good to be back. He hadn’t been happy not working. He’d been miserable, really. Arthur is not meant to live a normal, pedestrian, life. He loves the hunt, tracking down every small detail of someone’s life. He loves scouting, and strategizing. He loves being the first one in and the last one out. He’s missed the thrill. This job will be good for him, and Arthur thinks he’s finally going to be able to get over the incident with the Weiss job.

He couldn’t be more wrong.


	5. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

Eames has never quite gotten over the fact that when a person dies in a dream, their body stays. Just like in real life, you have to actually dispose of it to be rid of its presence. It’s not at all like taking a kick out. The mind can’t wrap around the sudden disappearance of a person without reason, so it doesn’t try to fill in the blanks. 

But death? Death the mind knows. It understands that when a person is shot, or beaten, or strangled, that it leaves a corpse. It leaves painfully detailed, perfectly accurate corpses.

As much as Weiss takes glee in acts of violence, he doesn’t like sharing space with the dead. It’s Kohler’s job to clean up the mess, which means it’s Eames’ job to clean up this one. He imagines that Kohler would do something decidedly thug-like, maybe dropping the weighted body into a river, or leaving it stripped naked on a pile of garbage in a red light district.

But this is a dream, and this is Arthur. This is Arthur’s body, even if it isn’t real. Even if it’s just a creation of Eames’ subconscious, he can’t bear to disrespect it any more than he already has. It’s insane, feeling this way, because Eames knows that Arthur is fine topside. He could place the body behind the warehouse and return quickly to finish the dream. There are no police to avoid or a need hide any evidence. Still, he can’t just leave Arthur’s body out unattended, undignified and broken.

Eames pushes the loose hair from Arthur’s broken face, turning the more damaged side away so he doesn’t have to look upon the worst of the wounds. Arthur appears so young in death. His pallor is magnified with the loss of blood. His lips are parted slightly and unmoving because no breath passes through them. After only a moment, Eames looks away, an aching pain winding it’s way under his ribs at the sight. He wraps the body carefully in a discarded tarp found somewhere in the warehouse and takes it out to the boot of a car.

He drives for a few minutes until he’s enough distance away to not disturb the dream in Weiss’ presence. Along the way he drops his forge. It’s unnecessary, and truthfully he needs a break. Eames stops the car near a park and sits for a minute, hands still clutching the wheel. He draws in a shaky breath before opening his door. Gathering Arthur’s body out of the car, he carries it into the grass of the field. Eames concentrates and the earth opens into a shallow grave. It’s a sobering construction, the packed dirt walls are too geometric for the beauty of the park. It’s like an open wound upon the landscape.

He kneels, placing his bundle into the earth, unable to stop his hand from smoothing over the plastic like one would straighten a baby’s blanket. He sighs, a short puff of suffering air before he stands. When he turns to walk away, the grave fills itself in with green grass concealing it within seconds.

***

Eames’ eyes blink open to the dimly lit hotel room. He slowly sits up from the bed and pulls free from the PASIV line. The room smells of takeout and something sour. Ariadne or Arthur must have gone for food while he and Jackson were still in the dream.

It had been a success. After Arthur’s death, Weiss had noticeably calmed. Their scenarios had executed flawlessly. Jackson would debrief Arthur on the details and Arthur would then relay the findings to their client. They completed the job and Eames couldn’t help but feel relieved that everything that had happened down there might actually worth something.

After gaining his bearings again Eames catches eyes with Arthur, keeping his face as stony as possible. He doesn’t want to reveal too much. Arthur, with his logic and practicality would just laugh in his face if he let on that the dream bothered him at all. Eames doesn’t want to know what Arthur would think if he knew that Eames had taken the time to bury his body in a park.

But Arthur just stares at him, shifting nervously in his clothes. The gesture is so unlike Arthur that Eames is a little startled. When he tries to approach Arthur, Arthur retreats to the bathroom. Eames lingers a bit longer, just to make sure. But it’s obvious that Arthur just needs space. It was a difficult dream after all.

He can give Arthur space.


	6. The Consequences of Trust

Arthur is working diligently, populating the profile of their target. The mark is in the lower echelon of a minor cartel, so he’s somewhat harder to trace. Arthur is just thankful that Ariadne’s blackmailer is also not that well connected, because he really doesn’t want to be fucking with the leaders of any major Colombian drug running operation right now—or ever for that matter.

Wild is helping him scour piles of documents, but it frustrates the man quickly. Wild steps out for a long smoke break that Arthur knows will become a typical occurrence to escape the mind-numbing task of reading print out after print out. So Arthur continues poring over phone records as he searches for anything to aid them in their goal. He’s nearly finished with the first stack when his body seizes up at the sound of a familiar voice.

“Ariadne, love! Good to see you again. You look like hell!”

“Charming, Eames, do you greet everyone with an insult?”

“Only when it’s the truth, my dear. But you look like you’ve been dragged through the mud. It’s one of _those jobs_ is it?”

“Unfortunately. Arthur is here. He seems to think it’s manageable.”

“Well if that unimaginative sod thinks it is, then this job will be a piece of cake!”

“I hope so, Eames,” Ariadne pauses, “this guy is threatening my family.”

“Hmmm. Can’t have that, can we?” Eames says darkly.

Blood starts pumping so loudly through Arthur’s ears that he doesn’t hear any more of the conversation. His heart races and his palms begin to sweat. He didn’t know that Eames was going to be on this job.

Arthur should have figured he would, though. Ariadne turned to whom she trusted to be the best. _He should have known._ But Arthur hadn’t, Ariadne hadn’t told him, and now Eames is here. Eames is here and Arthur’s heart won’t slow its rapid beating.

He hurries to the small restroom of the shop to collect himself before Eames can make it into the back room. It is a strange déjà vu. Arthur’s head is swimming and his stomach is knotting up uncomfortably. He leans over the sink, clutching the edges of the counter with a white knuckled grip. He looks at himself in the mirror. A grimace is etched into his color-drained face.

Arthur thinks about retching into the toilet, but he wouldn’t be able to conceal the sound. Instead he swallows a couple times, forcing the bile down, turning the tap on to run cold water over his hands for a few seconds before scrubbing them over his face. He closes his eyes and concentrates on slowing his breathing.

Finally after a few minutes, he feels like he can leave the sanctuary of the small room and unlocks the door, hesitating only for a moment before opening it and stepping out. Eames is sitting at one of the desks, legs spread casually as he slumps into a chair. Eames is studying a few photographs that were left out and he glances up when Arthur emerges.

“Arthur.” 

Eames’ greeting is short. There’s no emotion in it, just a quick acknowledgment of his presence in the room. It stabs at Arthur in some small way. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but this _nothingness_ was not it. In the past Arthur had been greeted by Eames with anything from a somewhat too forceful but friendly slap on the back, to flat out flirting, leers, or mockery.

Arthur nods as a reply, sitting at his desk, returning as little in his acknowledgement of Eames as he received. He tightly tamps down any emotion threatening to creep out. He thinks, _I’m nothing to him._ Eames had Proved it in the dream, ending the need for a facade of friendship.

Anger flares inside of Arthur and his fists ball up involuntarily, nails digging into his palms. Little half moons of white appear where the blood is pushed away. He grits his teeth and glares at the papers in front of him, unable to focus on the information but needing something, anything, to look at besides Eames.

Wild returns from his smoking break and is introduced to Eames by Ariadne. When they are through exchanging pleasantries, Arthur has calmed somewhat. He shouldn’t be letting Eames affect him. He knows where he stands now, and _that’s fine._ Arthur adjusts his tie, composing himself, and moves to silently slide a folder of profiles onto Eames’ desk. He doesn’t even glance down at Eames when the other man drags the folder across the desk. Arthur sits back down to continue sifting through his own papers.

Arthur and Eames work in a quiet, professional, manner. There is no banter between them like there used to be. Eames attempts, once to playfully joke with Arthur, but Arthur shuts him down. It’s the first time Eames has attempted anything other than indifference and it immediately enrages Arthur. Maybe he’s a little too brusque about his refusal to play their game because Eames gives up far more easily than he should, while Ariadne shoots them both a confused look.

The days go by slowly, the air always thick with tension and it’s excruciatingly difficult for Arthur to concentrate. Arthur has to remind himself that he can be fine working with Eames, having no relationship, no friendship with this man. He’s worked with plenty of people he actively disliked. But every time Eames moves, Arthur’s body tenses involuntarily and he has to will himself to stay calm. He keeps flicking glances over to the forger just to keep track of his location. Eames has to have noticed this, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Arthur thinks he’s grateful for that small allowance. He doesn’t have a satisfactory explanation if Eames were to bring it up.

Arthur has never been this distrustful before. Sure, he’s a criminal and he has had to work with other criminals, ones who would sell him out for very little reason at all. He has worked with people who would lie and steal from anyone. But Arthur will always protect his team, no matter if they would not return the favor. As point, it’s simply what he does.

Maybe he’s just feeling the loss of trust in someone he thought he could rely on. Being the best in the field, Arthur had been able to maintain a fairly reliable team these last few years. At least he thought he had been able to, until the Weiss job.

His thoughts loop back to that day: to Eames as Kohler slamming the brick down on his face, and Eames’ goddamn eyes flashing grey as he tortured Arthur to an agonizing death. Each blow seemed like a knife stabbed into his heart.

The phantom pain that ghosts across his skin at the memory is a new and frightening development. Arthur startles, standing abruptly, tipping over his chair when he remembers the feeling of shifting, shattering bones underneath his skin. Ariadne jumps at the sound of wood hitting the floor, her head snapping up from working on her model.

Arthur doesn’t even grab his jacket before dashing out of the shop, scrambling, fleeing to the relative safety of his rented apartment. He thinks his hands wouldn’t be able to keep hold of the fabric anyway, with the way they’re shaking.

Arthur needs to be alone now, to reorient himself, to shut his mind off. He sees Ariadne try to stop him from leaving, but he ignores her. Eames just watches him exit. Arthur misses the down turned corners of the Eames’ mouth as he toys nervously with a toothpick.

Arthur arrives at his small apartment flushed and jittery. To calm himself, he takes a long, warm shower. He looks at himself in the mirror after he delicately prods the line of his eye socket with the tips of his fingers. Reassuring himself that the structure is still whole, he methodically brushes his teeth.

Afterward, Arthur crawls into bed, bundled underneath the sheets despite the heat. It feels safer, which is stupid, acting like he is a frightened child, but it comforts him nonetheless. Not enough, though. 

Arthur’s nightmares return.

Unlike before, he remembers the dreams very clearly. They’re worse. He’s trapped, strapped to a chair and a man he thought he trusted is looming threateningly above him. Arthur can’t escape, he can’t fight his way up, and Eames is mutilating his face, killing him over and over.

The worst part is that Eames no longer appears as Kohler, but instead he shifts from different versions of himself from Arthur’s memories. Eames is in his Royal Air Force uniform, splattering blood across the front. He’s ruining his yellow, paisley button down that Arthur hates. He’s in his tuxedo, bringing agony and death with nothingness behind his gray eyes as Arthur begs, pleads, tries anything to make him stop. Arthur is always trapped, unable to look away, unable to die. He’s forced to relive it, on repeat, every night.

Arthur tries to rush the timeline for the job because he can no longer sleep on his own and sleeping with the influence of the PASIV is not the same. The quicker this all is finished, the faster he can get as far away as possible.

Arthur needs the nightmares to end. He needs sleep. He needs to not be responsible for anyone’s life right now. He needs to run.

Instead, Arthur throws himself farther into his research, poring over every necessary and unnecessary line of information. He rechecks everything three times. Then he checks again, just to be sure, just to have something that he knows for certain to be the truth. Arthur has to have control over something, because right now he can’t really control himself.

He spends as much time away from the shop on surveillance as he safely can without being noticed by the mark. When Arthur is in the shop, he avoids Ariadne just as much as Eames, because she’s worried and he can’t explain this to her. He can’t slow down or he’ll crack.

Arthur makes sure that he and Eames are never in the building at the same time when creating the dreamscape with Ariadne. Eames hasn’t attempted to follow them under during their planning, but Arthur can’t be sure Eames won’t. He’s still unsure if he’ll be able to handle going under with Eames during the actual job. But Arthur will have to, somehow. He reminds himself that Ariadne needs him.

It’s bad enough that she has to be worried about her brother, her client, and this mark. She shouldn’t have to be worried over a teammate’s mental health yet again. He’s not Cobb. His wife didn’t commit suicide in front of him, and there is no reason he should be behaving this way.

That knowledge changes nothing about the way he feels.

On the days when it’s impossible to avoid the group, Arthur keeps to himself. Wild ignores him, practicing the maze over and over for the extraction. Ariadne frowns at him but concentrates on her models.

Eames hovers, without speaking a word to him. He stares at Arthur, his eyes unreadable. Arthur hates how the man can hide everything he’s thinking when he wants to. But maybe Arthur doesn’t want to know what Eames is thinking after all.

Arthur is only sleeping a few fitful hours a night. As the deadline approaches, Arthur gets worse. He can see in the mirror that he is noticeably frayed at his edges, his features drawn tight and his skin paler. Ariadne becomes more nervous but she’s stopped asking Arthur what is wrong. He hasn’t given her an answer and he won’t.

He’d snapped at her, telling her to pay attention to the level because, “If she wanted her brother to remain alive, she just needed to get her shit done.” He’d earned a glare from Wild for that outburst. Arthur hadn’t meant it like that. It should have been directed towards himself. Bringing up the threat to her sibling was just cruel. But he can’t take it back because it’s partly true. More importantly, it has effectively shut Ariadne up so Arthur can focus on getting this job over with. Eames, thankfully, wasn’t there for the incident. He’d been out tailing the mark’s wife for reference.

The day before the extraction, Arthur enters the shop just after sunrise. He hears the murmurs of voices beyond the entry room walls. Ariadne and Eames are discussing something, oblivious to his arrival. It’s odd because Arthur is always the first one in. 

Arthur finds it unsettling and that thing that now resides in the pit of his stomach hardens. As quietly as possible, he continues through the entry room, approaching the archway to the main room where his two partners are talking.

“What happened down there, Eames? He hasn’t been the same since the Weiss job.”

“I didn’t think it would affect him like this. Arthur is always the fucking strong one, holding the pieces together with Cobb for so long and all.”

“You didn’t think _what_ would affect him, Eames? I saw him wake up on that job; he was a mess. Did you know he passed out for an hour after vomiting onto the floor? I thought he was having a heart attack, Eames. It scared the shit out of me, until I checked his pulse and he was still alive.”

“Fuck.”

“What happened? Jackson didn’t know anything. I asked. Why won’t you tell me?”

Arthur’s blood turns to ice in his veins. He decides to make his presence known before this conversation goes farther. He doesn’t need Ariadne’s pity, or her therapy, or her help. He doesn’t want her to know. He doesn’t need his teammates talking about him while he is out. He quietly slinks back to the door, opening and shutting it loudly, as if he is coming in for the first time. The conversation cuts off immediately.

Arthur walks in, pretending he hasn’t heard anything. He acts like it’s just another day, despite the fact that he would rather bolt out the door than be here. He stalks past where his two teammates are seated to set up his laptop at his desk.

Ariadne looks caught, an embarrassed pink rosing her cheeks, as she fiddles with her summer scarf. Eames looks as expressionless as he has been looking, since after the Weiss job. Arthur ignores them both. _It’s just one more day until this is over,_ he reminds himself. When Wild arrives, Arthur repeats that to himself, as a mantra, while they all go over the final details. ***

Arthur finds that he has to get creative when the projections start becoming hostile too quickly. Ariadne is smart, and her design is a perfect mess of mazes within mazes, but it’s just not working. Arthur is usually more able to distract projections and to remain calm in the dream, but he’s agitated at being put under with Eames for the first time since the Weiss job. He’s rattled from walking in on the conversation this morning and so he's distracted, slipping, allowing the projections too much time to become restless in the dream.

No playful kiss or other diversion is going to distract the projections now that they're already violent.

Wild and Eames are perfectly capable of extracting without Arthur by their sides. If he can distance himself, run in circles, change the dream by building, he may be able to distract the projections. If he’s far enough away, the mark himself should remain somewhat unaware of the inexplicable shifting of the world. He has to take the risk. The mark isn’t militarized but as a criminal many of his projections are armed. If Arthur stays with the team, the projections gun them all down.

Arthur leaves his team to wander Ariadne’s maze on his own.

He is in the middle of building an eight-tier Penrose staircase when the first thrums of elongated musical notes flood the dream. Building paradoxical architecture always absorbs his attention. The concentration needed to hold the stability of the structure while making it a seamless loop creates a tunnel of focus, pushing out all his other thoughts and silencing the turmoil inside him. He's been simultaneously dodging dying from the projections and building structures in the small section of maze he’s sequestered.

The music pulses in the sky. Arthur knows that if they’ve made it to the timer, then the job must be successful. Nobody wants to shoot themselves out early unless they have to. And nobody has given him a kick signifying their failure.

As the music continues it’s slowed cadence, the final few minutes drawing near, Arthur contemplates his next move. The unease he felt earlier returns now that he’s not building, knowing he’ll be back in a room with Eames soon.

The second his eyes open topside, Arthur swiftly removes the needle from his wrist and begins clearing out. Back at the shop, after they’ve left the mark sleeping off the remnants of the extra anesthesia, he burns his files in a bin and heads out to empty his apartment. They’ll have payment in the morning and Ariadne will no longer owe this asshole client anything.

It’s not Arthur’s way to leave before everyone else. It goes against every fiber of his being, everything that has been ingrained into him from his training. But they don’t have to worry about retaliation with the job’s success and Arthur can barely contain his need to flee.

He gives a short goodbye, purposefully ignoring the surprised looks. He doesn’t care. Arthur just needs to leave. He can feel panic building inside, like a volcano waiting to erupt. Like it always does, moments away from reaching a goal, or moments away from dying for that matter.

It takes him all of three hours before he’s on a flight to Spain. He’s keyed up and Arthur knows he’s not going to sleep through the long flight, so he stares out of the window watching the vast ocean pass by below.

He doesn’t last long in Madrid, or Berlin, or Florence after. They’re too transitional and he never feels comfortable. Arthur never feels safe. No matter how far away from Eames he is, his nightmares never cease.


	7. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

It’s been nearly a year since Eames has worked with Arthur last. Not like he hasn’t tried, it’s just that Arthur isn’t working. Not the jobs that Eames has been able to find out about at least. He’d only heard of him working a single job with Ariadne four months back, and there had been no use for a forger on that one. He couldn’t even try and weasel his way in the job was so simple. Too easy for someone as talented as Arthur, by far.

It’s as if Arthur is avoiding work. _But that’s just silly,_ Eames thinks. Surely it’s just that Arthur is taking a vacation. Arthur doesn’t need money, that’s certain. The man is brilliant with his finances. He never needs to work again with all the successful, six figure jobs under his belt. Eames knows that Arthur does this because he loves it. Arthur does it for the challenge, for the dreams, for the creation. He does it because it makes him necessary and makes him feel useful. He does it because he can be the best.

It’s been nearly a year and finally Eames will get to see Arthur again because Ariadne called pleading for help. Eames has to wonder what she’s gotten herself into to sound so tight and panicked on the phone. He’s worked with her several times over the last year, but the real reason he’s here is because Arthur is here. Not that he would abandon Ariadne, but he’s not lying to himself about his motivations.

When he arrives at the office Ariadne greets him alone. Arthur is nowhere to be seen. He ribs the tiny architect a little, to break some of the tension that’s built up in his shoulders and stomach, and then he sits at one of the small desks. Eames idly picks through a few photographs to have something to do when a door clicks open to his right. Arthur emerges from what appears to be a small restroom.

He seems strained somehow: tight around the shoulders and too serious. The Arthur that Eames knows, while being somewhat of a tight ass, is usually much more relaxed than this. He’s a confident man and when focused he can be intimidating. But Arthur is never this sharp, all glass edges, and ready to shatter at any moment. Eames feels like he could break him just by looking at him, so he glances down and forcibly calms his voice, which is threatening to break with emotion.

“Arthur,” Eames says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Arthur gives him a broken look, a little flash of pain before he boxes it up again. Arthur doesn’t say anything in return. He just nods curtly and with as much animosity as seemingly possible. Eames doesn’t know what to do.

***

Eames tries—only once—to fall back into the casual banter they formerly enjoyed, hoping that maybe they just needed to get back into the swing of things; that everything would come back if he just tried to make things normal again. But Arthur shuts him down with such sudden force that Eames gives up immediately.

Things remain tense for the rest of the job. Arthur keeps giving him watchful glances, like he’s tracking him. Eames ignores it, or pretends to rather. He wants to call Arthur on the behavior, but he also doesn’t want to make things worse. Ariadne needs this job to go smoothly. But when one night Arthur snaps, sprinting out of the shop and leaving confusion in his wake, Eames knows he needs to fix this. 

He’ll confront Arthur, after the job is complete.

With the little episode apparently behind him, Arthur works with unyielding focus. There is never a time that Arthur isn’t buried in his research, it seems. Eames finds himself busy tailing his subjects and when he returns, Arthur is usually out surveying the mark or too wrapped up in research to be bothered. It’s as if Arthur plans his day around how to best avoid any contact with him.

Ariadne keeps looking at Arthur worriedly and then looking at Eames. Of course she’s trying her best to hide her thoughts, but she’s not a skilled actress at all. Her expression is always worried; she’s teetering on the verge of interfering, but doubting that she should. 

Eames can read people well anyway, but he’s going to have to coach her on hiding her emotions. It’s not that it makes her easy to manipulate or anything; she’s too strong willed for that. But it does make it easy to predict what she’ll do or say, and that’s a disadvantage in this line of work.

A few days before the job, Eames is perfecting his forge. He comes out his typical mirror dream to an empty shop. It’s not unusual. Arthur can work from anywhere with his laptop. Wild dicks off as soon as he’s done running drills in the mazes. Ariadne can tweak her mazes up until the very end, but with the level pretty much finished, she heads out early more often than not.

Eames is packing up the PASIV when he hears the front door open noisily. He squats down quickly, his hand instantly tracing over his pant-leg where he has a loaded pistol residing in his sock holster. Eames doesn’t think whomever is entering is a threat. No one trying to get a drop on him would be that noisy or careless, but he can’t be too careful. Ariadne walks in from the entry room, one arm crossing her body, clutching the elbow of her arm timidly.

“Ariadne, what are you doing here? It’s late,” he says as stands.

“I need to talk to you about …” she sighs. “Well, about Arthur.”

Eames hums, not quite in agreement but not dismissively either. He shuts the PASIV with a click, then seats himself. Ariadne pulls a chair up close to his. She curls into it like a child would, legs tucked underneath her and leaning on the armrest. She’s a tiny thing. Sometimes she seems so very young.

Then she opens her mouth and she doesn’t seem that young at all. Irritating and meddling, yes. But she’s sharp. Eames is often surprised at just how much so. She’s insufferably to the point when she wants to be.

“What’s wrong with him, Eames?”

“Why do you presume that I know the answer to that?” he deflects. His fingers itch at the fabric of his pants. He fights the urge to look around the room, instead giving direct eye contact and his full attention. Ariadne levels a cool glare at him. She’s not having any of his bullshit, and Eames, oh he has all kinds of bullshit he could fling, but he decides it’s not worth the hassle.

“It’s really not my place. I mean, even less so than with Cobb, because Cobb was risking all of us and Arthur isn’t, but it’s not my place to butt into his business. I know something is wrong, though, Eames. He fucking snapped at me the other day. He’s never been anything but patient before. Something happened to him, and the way he reacts to you is just unsettling. You two don’t even bicker anymore. The Fischer job, I got that you guys had history and the arguing wasn’t entirely serious and all, but this is different. He genuinely dislikes being around you.”

She’s on a rant. Eames listens, not stopping her, because it’s true. It’s true and he needed to hear it somewhere other than in his own head. Arthur can’t stand to be around him. He’s zoned out in thought until he finds Ariadne is leaning in front of him, her face inches away from his own. She has a fierce look in her eye.

“What happened down there, Eames? He hasn’t been the same since the Weiss job.”

The Weiss job. Eames had made a grave mistake. He should never have left Arthur alone. He should have been stubborn, forced the issue. Even if Arthur never worked with him again, hated him, it would be better than watching him fall apart like this. But Eames hadn’t expected Arthur of all people to break.

“I didn’t think it would affect him like this,” Eames answers. “Arthur is always the fucking strong one, holding the pieces together with Cobb for so long and all,” he says, and it’s an excuse, another deflection. Eames knows that this is his fault.

“You didn’t think _what_ would affect him, Eames? I saw him wake up; he was a mess. Did you know he passed out for an hour after vomiting on the floor? I thought he was having a heart attack, Eames. It scared the shit out of me until I checked his pulse and he was still alive.”

“Fuck.” Eames hadn’t known that. He remembers the sour smell in the room and can place it now.

“What happened? Jackson didn’t know anything. I asked. Why won’t you tell me?”

And then there is a noise at the door. They glance up, surprised to find it’s morning already. Arthur walks in, shoulders set with tension already. He stalks over to the desk. Eames knows he’s heard at least part of the conversation. Arthur never enters a room by broadcasting his position; he’s a better thief than that. Every line in Arthur’s face is screaming anger, his face is hard like he could drive his own teeth straight through his jaw.

Ariadne is red with embarrassment. Eames just feels guilty.

***

The job goes well enough. Arthur disappeared halfway through it for some reason, but the projections died down at the same time. Eames has to assume Arthur was running interference. Wild is good. Not as good as Cobb, but also not as crazy. 

They’re leisurely cleaning out the shop and Eames is thinking of ways to approach Arthur. Dread is the only thing he feels stronger than guilt. He doesn’t want to make another mistake, push too hard and make Arthur shut down completely. But he needs to make this right. Before Eames has the chance though, Arthur is leaving.

A clipped goodbye is all they get before Arthur disappears out the door. It’s very unexpected. Ariadne is goggling aft Arthur and even Wild has the good grace to look taken aback. Arthur never leaves first. He’s the fucking point and he is one of the most steadfast and dedicated points Eames has ever known—in Eames military career, or in dream sharing.

Eames has to finish cleaning up because he just can’t leave their research out and about for people to find. He’s pissed because he should be chasing after Arthur. By the time Eames makes it to Arthur’s apartment it’s been cleared out. He checks the passenger itinerary at the closest airport. Eames doesn’t find anyone matching any of the aliases he’s forged for Arthur, which means Arthur has gone off grid. He’s using his own fakes and that’s going to put Eames way behind on his trail. He curses under his breath before returning to his small apartment to pack up.

Eames will find Arthur. He has to. Unfortunately, Arthur has always been good at covering his tracks.


	8. The Consequences of Trust

Arthur goes to Paris. It’s a gamble, but he thinks he needs to be somewhere that feels like home. He hasn’t been at ease in this country since Mal died. It brings back too many memories of life just after leaving the Military. It brings back memories of life with Mal and Dom when they were all carefree. He remembers when they were a trio, exploring dreams and pushing the limits of what the mind can do together. It was before Dom moved back to The States with Mal, to militarize CEO’s and businessmen against the new danger of dream theft and raise a new family.

Arthur wonders how Cobb could stand it here during the Fischer job, but he thinks it’s because the payoff was too great to pass up. The payoff was his life. The payoff was the promise of a family again, of a fraction of happiness Cobb’s new, bleak world without Mal.

Arthur had been too focused on the job to reflect properly at the time. Now, the memories drift around him like a suffocating mist. He remembers picnics in Jardin des Tuileries, trips to Le Marais to fawn over buildings, and lunches in le Quartier Latin. Arthur remembers Mal’s laughter—the genuine one in stark contrast to the bitter, sarcastic cackle her shade used before inflicting so much pain in dreams.

The memories are painful, but Arthur knows this city like he knows the back of his hand. It’s still more home than any other place can ever be, than any other place he’s ever lived. He secures a small apartment in Montmartre but the familiar flow of the neighborhood still does little to help him settle. Instead, Arthur retreats from the world.

The nightmares cycle in a never-ending loop, replaying over and over in his head. They become more detailed and deranged over time. Eames is no longer reserved and without emotion in the dreams. Instead he becomes hard and wrathful, manic even. The aggression escalates as Arthur dies again and again. He screams, choking on his own blood in the dream. He breaks his wrists against the bonds, tears his skin open trying to escape. He cries, and begs, and screams. Always he screams.

Arthur has never wished more for the blissful, peaceful, dreamless sleep of the Somnacin addicted. But he can’t bring himself to use his PASIV. He can’t give in and put himself under alone, to allow himself to become vulnerable, both in reality and in the dream. The possibility of becoming lost inside his own mind, to risk becoming trapped in there with his projection of Eames, deters him from seeking relief.

The constant stress wears on him. Lack of sleep blurs the world, blending nightmares with reality. Death seems to lurk around every corner, and every face holds a new threat. Anyone could be there to hurt him, to capture him, torture him, to make his nightmares reality.

Arthur is never far from a gun, because at this point he can barely tell what and who is real. On the rare occasion he is forced to venture out for supplies, he falls apart. Arthur has timed his trips down to the minute so that he can make it back to the relative safety of his apartment before he’s crippled by anxiety. It’s the last shred of self-preservation he has left.

If he didn’t do this he’d have probably shot someone by now. Or he’d have been sent to an institution, which is never a good place for those in the business. Extractors are too close to the mind as it is, and their lives—their stories—sound insane. The work is too obscure, unknown to most of the public. Leaving an institution is nearly impossible when nobody will believe that your reality is dreaming. He’s seen where that road leads from unfortunate casualties in the trade. He thinks that maybe this is another reason why Mal went through so much trouble to declare herself sane. So that if her plan to trap Dom never got off the ground, she wouldn’t be locked away.

Arthur is on one of his carefully planned outings, making his way home from the neighborhood market when a familiar laugh floats through the air. The hair on his body stands on end. He spots Ariadne at the entrance of a cafe, tugging Wild along by the sleeve. A surge of warmth spreads through his body immediately upon seeing her, but it is followed by an icy-cold wave of dread. Sweat breaks out at the nape of his neck and he swallows with effort.

The world moves in slow motion as Arthur watches her turn his direction. The moment she sees him he can practically feel the sidewalk drop out from underneath his feet. He’s floating on anxiety, his hands already twitching for the firearm tucked into his sock brace. She smiles with such honest happiness that he forgets everything else. Mal flashes before his eyes, the way she was before, and it’s so beautiful he wants to cry. Then she’s moving towards him, calling his name. But when Ariadne hugs him he can’t help but tense up.

“Arthur, what are you doing in Paris?” Ariadne asks as Wild takes his place at her side. Arthur glances nervously around. This is too much, he wants to be at home, safe in his apartment. He hadn’t planned for this.

“I live here,” he says flatly. He feels like he’s being torn apart inside. He wants so badly to stay and talk to her, to catch up, to have a normal conversation. But he needs to get home before something goes wrong. Before he can’t fight the need to reach for his weapon.

“Since when? I know Paris is huge, but I would think we would have seen you around somewhere!”

“I don’t go out much.” That statement earns him appraising look. Ariadne’s eyes narrow and he can practically hear the thoughts forming in her head. She’s taking in his appearance now, disheveled and loose. He’s still wearing a suit, as security, as protection, to hold himself together, but Arthur hasn’t had it dry-cleaned or pressed recently.

“Arthur, is everything okay? You aren’t in any danger are you?” She asks, but he knows it’s not the question she wants to ask. She has to know that he hasn’t been working and therefore can’t be on the run. She has to know that he’s gone off grid for no justifiable reason.

“I’m fine,” Arthur lies. Ariadne won’t believe him. He doesn’t care, he just needs out of this conversation. Everything today has gone wrong and he’s cursing himself for leaving his flat in the first place. He had not needed groceries this badly. He could have lived on pasta and butter for a few more days.

“Arthur,” she tries to continue, but he cuts her off.

“Listen, I’m sorry, I’m rushed for time. We’ll catch up soon, okay?” He’s pleading for her to accept. To leave well enough alone.

“Okay,” she concedes but her expression is clearly disapproving. Before Ariadne can change her mind, to demand the truth, he pushes past her, calling over his shoulder as he wills himself not to start sprinting away.

“I’ll call you.”

He doesn’t fail to notice Ariadne’s brows furrow as she watches him race away.

When he arrives home he slams the door shut, checking the locks three times before leaning his back against it. He slowly slides down, eyes shut, placing his groceries on the floor next to him as he tucks his knees under his chin. _Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck,_ he curses repeatedly in his mind.

***

Arthur doesn’t run into Ariadne again after that. It’s been weeks since, but he still ventures out less than he had before. When he does, it’s at odd hours and without routine. He doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before; going to the grocery store right before closing or first thing in the morning. It’s much easier to maintain calm and control with fewer people around.

Arthur is on his way to the store early in the morning when a black sedan catches his eye. It’s been on the street for days now. Arthur knows his neighbors cars. He was a point man after all. His observation skills will never be completely turned off. He runs scenarios in his head. There are no dealer tags on the car and the plates are scuffed and old, dirty, so the car isn’t a new purchase. Nobody has moved in on the entire block recently. It could be a guest visiting. But he finds that unlikely. The car is there all the time and Arthur has never seen the driver. This leads him to believe that it is someone with skill, someone with surveillance training.

Arthur hasn’t worked a job, hasn’t failed a job, in ages. He runs a tally of past debts, enemies, and former clients. Nothing comes up as a likely source for a tail. The only thing even remotely close is the Cobol job, but Saito had squared that debt after Inception. No other dreamer is gunning for his position. Arthur has been out of the game for long enough that he’s not taking work from anyone. No, this is something else, something Arthur doesn’t know yet.

He walks faster but goes about his routine like usual, not letting on that he thinks anything is suspicious. He’s going to have to change things up even more. He needs to find out who is watching him. When he returns home, the car is gone. Instead of relief, Arthur feels more nervous. He enters his flat and after putting his new supply of groceries away, he sits on the couch. He tries again to work out who would be after him. 

Then, it hits him.

It’s nobody. It’s no one. It’s just a coincidence, just a random car that happens to be sitting on his street. It’s a guest, it’s somebody’s new used car. Arthur is fucking paranoid. Arthur knows that he’s been irrational. He just hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten. He’d freaked out over seeing Ariadne and his fear has escalated to this: to conspiracies, to thinking he’s being followed, to insanity.

When had his life become this? When had he become this pathetic mess, this man who can’t go out to get toilet paper without having a panic attack? Arthur feels the familiar gnawing pit of anxiety in his stomach and he’s angry. He’s angry with himself for being so weak. Maybe he _should_ commit himself. Maybe he really does need to seek help. But then Arthur thinks about being trapped in a hospital, dosed out of his mind on drugs that won’t push the dreams away. He thinks of what it will be like not being in control of his body. Of being trapped forever behind locked doors because his truth will only be interpreted as lies.

It’s only nine in the evening but Arthur surrenders to exhaustion anyway. He pops a few sleeping pills that he knows will only dull his thoughts slightly and resigns himself to the nightmares for the night.

That car is there again the next morning. It has tinted windows and is sitting up the block, just within view, when Arthur peeks out the blinds. He can’t let this get to him. He can’t. This is just a car. This is just Arthur’s mind. Fucking paranoid. Fucking stuck in his house, sweating in his sleep, weary, and weak.

And fuck it. Arthur doesn’t even want to stay in the apartment anymore. So what if he shoots someone? They’ll just haul him away. They’ll lock him up. It’s not as if he’s not locked up anyway. He’s trapped in his own little self-made cage. Determined, Arthur decides to face the world. He grabs his gun and shoves it angrily in the band of his pants, not even bothering with any of the holsters he could choose from.

He shoulders on a wrinkled jacket, concealing the piece poorly before wrenching the door open angrily. Arthur’s not even ten steps out the door before the fear starts to wash over him again. It’s tidal, obliterating his thoughts like the ocean obliterates shells and rocks into sand. He doesn’t even know what direction to go.

Arthur heads towards le Sacré-Cœur, instinct taking him up the hill towards the Romano-Byzantine influenced structure. The architecture has always drawn him in. It’s probably not the best place for him, with the tourists and the crowds. 

He doesn’t realize his mistake until someone lazily knocks into his shoulder. He snaps out of his trance, bristling. The stranger mutters a soft apology and it’s probably Arthur’s fault they collided, but the way he looks right now, half crazed and hollow, they’re not going to blame him at all. Arthur looks around the busy crowd that is here to visit the church, and his throat catches. He feels the heavy weight of the gun at his back and fights the urge to draw it, to point it into the crowd and clear a path.

Then out of the corner of his eye, Arthur sees him: a flash of dirty blond hair and paisley print in the crowd. Arthur’s head whips around to spot again, but there’s nothing there. His eyes dart around frantically. Eames. He just saw Eames. He just saw him, _where the fuck?_

The electric shock of realization hits him again, and Arthur laughs out loud. It’s a short bark of hysteria and malice. Because Arthur _knows_ now. He knows he’s insane. He doesn’t just _think_ he’s paranoid. He knows he’s gone far around the bend.

Arthur turns sharply and marches through the crowd, not caring about anyone in his way. People give him wide birth and when he’s at the edge enough, through the throng of people, he starts to run. He sprints back down the hill and through the streets. He doesn't stop running until he gets home, his legs weak from exertion. His lungs are heaving, gulping in air and burning. His hands tremble as he tries to unlock his door. The keys barely fitting. 

When he gains entrance, Arthur bolts the door and walks to the bathroom, opens the medicine cabinet and swallows the entire bottle of sleeping pills before he can change his mind.


	9. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

Eames’ eyes drift open and he stares at the morning lit ceiling of his hotel in Berlin. Arthur had been here, maybe just a week ago. Eames keeps missing him by days. Eames usually loves this city. He loves the academia, the arts, the quaint bistros and the booming nightclubs. But each day in Berlin without finding Arthur is another day of guilt and of wondering if he is okay.

Eames runs his palms over his face, working the sleep out of his eyes. His neck is tense and he pushes at his jaw to pop his spine. He’s still exhausted.

Arthur is not an easy man to find, let alone catch. It doesn’t help that Eames hasn’t been sleeping well. It’s not as if he sleeps in a regular fashion, but at before irregular hours never meant lack of actual sleep.

Now, he’s restless only able to snag a few hours of sleep a night. Eames keeps having the same dream. Every night he carefully buries Arthur’s beaten body in the green landscape of a park. Sometimes he sits with it, smoothing his hand over Arthur’s dark hair, avoiding the fragile crushed bones of his face. Sometimes he buries the body quickly, wandering the landscape aimlessly until eventually circling back to the park. His mind always circles back to Arthur.

He’s tried ignoring it, walking away, and leaving the park and the haunting square of disturbed soil. But he can’t escape. Eames always comes back, always has to take care of Arthur’s body. He can never just leave him alone, broken, exposed.

_But that’s exactly what I did wasn’t it?_ he thinks

Eames left Arthur, left him to deal with this pain himself. Eames left Arthur alone with festering wounds until Arthur snapped, until he became something not himself, something fragile and confused. Eames shouldn’t have thought that Arthur would be fine. What kind of a monster is he that he could do that to someone he cares about?

It eats away at Eames, knowing that he caused this, that his hands broke the strongest man in the business. The man that guided Dom — fucking crazy — Cobb home. The man that kept everyone safe. The man that handled every problem with efficient determination.

Arthur had been barely able to keep it together in Colombia. Eames has never seen him like that. He has never seen anything but control and a calm exterior from Arthur. Even under the threat of limbo, Arthur had only vented with a raised voice and angry glares.

Eames sighs and sits up. He had been planning to meet with some mutual friends for dinner, see if they’d heard anything about Arthur, but instead he packs his bags. Arthur isn’t here. Eames is not going to find him in this country. He knows this. This is all just an exercise in futility.

Instead, Eames calls Ariadne.

“Any word?” she asks. He sighs into the phone, sinking down against the wall until he’s sitting, legs splayed out awkwardly in front of him.

“Nothing,” Eames huffs.

“We’ll find him, Eames,” she soothes. But even she sounds less certain than usual, her youthful naiveté eaten away by just a few years in this field of work. Being the best has its dangers. Ariadne has now found that out the hard way. He hopes that she doesn’t have to learn the lesson twice.

“How’s Wild?” Eames asks, just to say words. Just to hear himself say anything other than what his mind wants to scream. _Where the fuck are you, Arthur?_

“He’s... he’s good, Eames. But you don’t care about that. We’ll find him, okay? Don’t let it get to you.”

Eames doesn’t bother to convince her he’s sincere, asking about Wild. She’s right. He can’t let this get to him if he’s going to find Arthur. He has to focus. He has to carry on.

***

Florence is nearly a disaster. Eames wonders if Arthur found out about Eames’ history here. Scratch that, Eames _knows_ Arthur knows about his history here. He wonders if Arthur is purposefully trying to get him killed or if he simply thought Eames wouldn’t follow. 

He wonders if Arthur even knows that Eames is following him.

He’s nursing a black eye and split lip, sitting in the dingy room of a cheap hostel. The ugly floral pattern of the comforter grates on his nerves. Eames has to lay low for a few days until he’s healed, until he can make a new passport and get the hell out of the country. He bites his lip in frustration before remembering his wound, hissing in pain when it splits open again and tastes the blood spilling onto his tongue with its acidic tang. Eames wonders why he came here at all. Arthur has always been a few steps ahead in this game of cat and mouse. This chase is useless. Eames has no leads after this. Florence was his last shot. He can’t find anything on Arthur who is completely off grid now, and Eames has run out of connections. He has run out of ideas.

In a few days, when Eames’ knuckles and face have healed enough, he’ll use his new I.D. and maybe go to Morocco. Or he could try the States. Or maybe he’ll go back to England for a while. The weather would be fitting for his mood.

***

Eames is sipping his tea from the ceramic mug of quiet cafe. The sheer lack of customers is the reason he can put up with mediocre brews and the palpable air of disinterested boredom emanating from the staff. In fact, that’s precisely why he’s here: he does not want to be bothered by anyone.

He’s been in nothing but a foul mood since narrowly escaping with his life from Italy. Failure does not sit well with him, nearly dying even less so. It’s puzzling, because Eames always has had such a strong sense of self preservation and yet he risked everything to traipse around in hostile territory for clues from a man he knew would be long gone.

It’s hard for him to admit that he cares too much for his own good. But there’s nothing he can do about that. It’s not like he’s going to suddenly stop. His dreams are proof of that. Eames doesn’t think he would want to stop, except for the fact that everyday without knowing if Arthur is safe is torture. It’s been a month and not a single trace of Arthur has turned up.

His phone ringing draws him out of his bitter thoughts.

“Hello, love,” he greets when he answers the call.

“He’s here, Eames.”

Eames snaps to attention, body going rigid and he nearly drops his cup. Instead he sets it down, wincing as it clatters on the saucer. Ariadne continues without prompting, without clarifying, because she knows Eames understands who she is speaking of.

“We ran into him. He lives in Paris somewhere.”

“I’m on my way.”

“There’s a flight out of England at seven. I’ll pick you up at the airport?”

“I’ll be there with bells on.”

***

Eames feels a little ridiculous as they pore over a map with a drafting compass, theorizing about human habits in relation to Arthur. He’s never actually thought of the man in terms of laundry service and shopping trips.

“He had groceries with him, so he had to have been at either this market, or this one here.” Ariadne points out two small areas on the map. “He was walking, so we should probably assume he lives within a kilometer of either, probably less.”

“Maybe he enjoys the exercise? He could live farther,” Eames suggests. Really, Arthur could be anywhere in this city.

“No, Arthur said he doesn’t go out much. And by the look of him, I’d say any trip out is made as quickly as possible.”

Eames feels himself tense at that bit of information, interpreting that Arthur has gotten much worse. Ariadne reaches over and gives his hand a quick, reassuring squeeze before she continues.

“We saw him walking this direction, so I’m thinking he’s going to be within these blocks here. There are apartments and small homes here and here. I’m assuming he wouldn’t have a large house. It doesn’t seem his style.”

“No, it wouldn’t be,” Eames agrees. “Arthur is efficient, and not wasteful. He wouldn’t want to clean extra rooms and wouldn’t take more than he needs anyway.”

“So we start there, and if we don’t find him we’ll try elsewhere.”

Eames nods, staring at the map. This is the first time he’s actually felt hopeful. Arthur had at least been seen, and just yesterday. Hopefully it isn’t enough time for Arthur to pack up and take off. Eames hopes with everything that he has that Arthur is still in Paris.

***

It’s two more weeks before Eames spots him. He’d nearly lost hope, thinking Arthur had left again, running across the world to get away. But Eames, waiting, sitting on a street corner in a car and hoping that Arthur lives anywhere near this neighborhood, finally spots him.

It’s late, the sun already having set hours ago. Arthur comes out of an apartment into the empty street. Eames immediately perks up at the sight of him. He could jump out of the car and hug the man, for all he wants to, but Eames doesn’t. He doesn’t want to scare Arthur off. He needs to know if Arthur really is as bad off as he had seemed on the last job.

Instead of following him, like he’s itching to, Eames sits in the same spot and impatiently waits for Arthur to return. When Arthur does, he’s carrying groceries. Eames glances at his watch, taking note of the time. Arthur is shopping at closing, probably to avoid the crowds or being found. That thought bothers Eames but the satisfaction of finally sighting Arthur overwhelms the unease. Finally, he knows exactly where Arthur is.

Eames sits outside Arthur’s apartment for a few more days, observing. Arthur doesn’t leave, not once. Eames keeps trying to think of what he’s going to say to him. Could he just knock on the door, be invited in for a chat? Would have to force his way in? And what does Eames have to say? What can he say? That he’s sorry? That he never wanted to hurt him? 

Eames still had. He had beaten the life out Arthur with his own two hands. What kind of apology would that be? _I’m sorry I tortured you, I did it for the job. I’m sorry I thought you were stronger. I’m sorry that I’m a terrible person who can kill their own friend in such a cruel way._

The more he thinks about it, the more Eames regrets it ever happened. He should have ended the job then and there, when he’d been asked to kill Arthur. He should have just shot Arthur and told Weiss that he wasn’t in the mood for physical exertion that day. He should have talked to Arthur immediately after, at the very least.

Eames doesn’t want to do this now, doesn’t know what to say, but he will. He has to. He has to at least try and make things better. Better for Arthur, even if they aren’t better for him. Because Arthur didn’t ever deserve this.

He’s just about to step out of the car when Arthur’s door opens. The man emerges in an angry disjointed jog. His hair is a mess of untamed curls, like he’s dragged his hand through it and tugged it out in frustration. His jacket is wrinkled, his shirt un-tucked, and Eames can see he’s not even wearing socks.

Then he sees the distinct bulge of a firearm at Arthur’s back. Some handgun is tucked into Arthur’s pants. Eames hair stands on end and his heart skips a beat. Arthur never disregards firearm safety. Something is very clearly wrong.

Arthur stalks off up the street, all nervous energy, ignoring the world around him. Eames quickly leaves the car in pursuit. He doesn’t know where Arthur is going, or what he’s so upset over, but he has to follow. This Arthur seems unnervingly dangerous. He seems even more dangerous than the Arthur who took out five men, without so much as blinking, after a botched job in Trinidad.

Arthur doesn’t stop, doesn’t even pause crossing streets. Cars screech to stop and Arthur doesn’t seem to notice them. He continues his warpath heading uphill. It becomes obvious where Arthur is headed because Eames can see the basilique sitting above them. Le Sacré-Coeur is crowded, full of civilians, and Arthur looks out of his mind. Eames doesn’t know what Arthur is capable of right now, he just hopes that Arthur isn’t completely mad.

When they reach the top of the staircase Eames gets caught by the crowd. Arthur rushes through like nobody is there at all. Eames is trying to weave his way to him when he sees someone knock into Arthur. The world slows down to a crawl, Eames’ vision is blurred on the edges because he’s only focused on Arthur. And he waits, he waits for Arthur to draw his gun on the poor tourist.

But Arthur doesn’t draw. He looks startled, like reality just came crashing back in on him. Eames makes to move towards him, trying to get through the crowd. He darts around a family but when he looks up again Arthur isn’t there.

He glances around, frantically, trying to relocate him. He spots Arthur on the edge of the crowd, near one set of steps. Arthur is moving fast. He’s racing off, down the stairs. He’s running. Eames darts through the crowd to get to him. He doesn’t care how this looks. Doesn’t care that it looks like he’s chasing him, because he is.

But Arthur is too fast. He’s sprinting down the hill and Eames isn’t his best pique physical condition. Sure he can outrun pursuit, for a short time, but he usually relies on getting the upper hand, or an advantageous position, or just plain hiding.

Arthur can run forever it seems. Arthur has the stamina of, of something that can go for a long time. He can’t think of anything specific while he’s running this hard.

Eames is breathing hard, lungs burning, regretting every cigarette he’d ever smoked, and he still hasn’t caught up to Arthur. But they’re back on Arthur’s street, so he assumes that Arthur must be going home. And that’s fine. That’s safe. Arthur going home is acceptable, because he’s not out in some crowd or wandering the streets of Paris.

Eames slows down. He can’t fucking breathe. He stops, hands on knees, trying to get air again. He knows you aren’t supposed to stop after running, you’re supposed to walk it off, but fuck if he can. He just needs to not collapse on the sidewalk right now.

After a minute, he goes to his car. He sits in the drivers seat, collecting himself. Eames still doesn’t know what to say, and he really would like Arthur to calm down before he confronts him. If that display back there was anything to go by it’s very likely that a gun will be aimed at him if he tries to enter the apartment now.

Eames waits for about ten minutes, a time that seems sufficient to let Arthur calm down. But when he knocks on the door there’s no answer.

“Arthur? Arthur, I know you’re in there. Please answer the door.”

Eames pauses, listening. Still nothing. He looks around nervously before knocking again.

“Arthur, please. I know you don’t really want to talk to me, but I need to speak with you.”

A sense of dread washes over him. Arthur not answering, not even to yell obscenities at him through the door, makes him nervous. He pounds on the door more forcefully.

“Arthur. Arthur, if you don’t answer this door, I’m going to kick it in. I would really prefer that you not shoot me, all right? Rather, I would prefer if you open the door yourself. Arthur?”

Still no answer, and now Eames has a growing sense of panic. He tests the handle, just to make sure he doesn’t have to break anything if he doesn’t need to and finds that it is indeed locked. He steps back, giving the door a swift kick just below the bolt.

The frame cracks but the dead bolt holds. It takes five more kicks to break through and surely the neighbors will have noticed that, but Eames doesn’t care. He doesn’t care because not a sound has been emitted from within the apartment. No click of a gun slide being cocked, no, “get the fuck out, Eames!” yelled at him. There’s nothing but the sound splintering of wood and his heavy breathing.

Eames bursts inside, finding an empty living room. With urgent strides he makes his way through the apartment, checking each room he passes. Down the hall he sees a closed door. Immediately he makes his way to it. When he tries to open it he finds the door stuck, cracking open only enough to barely see in.

He doesn’t like what he finds. A hand and rumpled shirtsleeve lay motionless on the floor. Desperately he shoves at the door, pushing at the obstruction only to find that the barrier is Arthur’s limp body.

“Arthur? Arthur? Fuck. Please, Arthur, speak to me, darling. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

When he finally shoves the door open enough, Eames draws the unresponsive man into his arms, ignoring the vomit smeared down Arthur’s face and along the floor. Eames lets go of the breath he is holding when he finds that Arthur is still breathing. Wet, shuddering, gasps that are too shallow and too few, but still there.

“Oh thank Mary, Mother,” Eames breaths out in relief.

Eames clears Arthur’s throat by sticking his fingers down it, pulling out vomit and spit, hoping that none of it went into his lungs. He pulls out his cell and dials fifteen. Fuck the paper trail, fuck the fact that they’re criminals, Arthur needs help immediately.

He waits impatiently for the ambulance to arrive, stroking Arthur’s hair from his eyes and holding him like he can hold Arthur’s life inside his body, like if he lets go Arthur’s soul will escape. Eames tries not to think about if he had waited longer, or how this could have been prevented if he hadn’t waited at all.

When the ambulance arrives, they bustle Arthur inside, checking over him and asking Eames questions he can’t answer. He stares in a daze at Arthur’s bluish skin, his placid face underneath the oxygen mask. He stares, trying to understand how he could have been so stupid.


	10. The Consequences of Trust

Arthur feels the pain before his eyes even have a chance to open. His throat feels singed raw and swollen. All of his muscles are on fire and he can feel the ache in his internal organs. His extremities are freezing and it feels like his skin is pulled too tight over his bones. Everything around his kidneys feels bruised and lying down is horrendously uncomfortable.

He tries to sit up to relieve the pressure in his back, but the room goes white with blinding pain. Every neuron in his brain feels like it’s exploding. He lets out a helpless groan, which just aggravates the charcoal in his stomach.

It’s then that Arthur realizes he’s in a hospital. He squints against the harsh fluorescent lights, letting the pain wash over him like the tide rolling over a beach as it dissipates into the glassy sand. This is the most ill thought out thing Arthur has ever done. He’s already mentally kicking himself for winding up in an infirmary. He should have taken an antiemetic before swallowing those pills.

He should have shot himself in the head.

He’ll be lucky if they only hold him for the mandatory minimum on suicidal psych holds. He’s already disconnecting his I.V. line to leave. The tube comes free with practiced ease even with his trembling fingers, when a low voice from the corner nearly makes him jump out of his skin.

“You’re lucky your liver isn’t permanently damaged. And while I have no doubts of your fighting skills, you’re only two hours after nearly ending your life. There are two armed guards outside the door, Arthur. Are you sure you’re up for a fight?”

Arthur nearly topples over and has to clutch at the plastic frame of the hospital bed to save himself from falling to the linoleum floor. His throat closes involuntarily and he finds himself in a fit of coughing, tears streaming down his face, and his sore stomach muscles clenching so hard around his delicate insides that he loses his grip on the bed.

Before he can really register anything more than the pain coursing through his entire body, Eames is at his side holding him up as he gasps for air. When he recovers enough to breathe again all he can feel is one of Eames’ large hands across the bared skin of the back, the other gripping his shoulder to steady him.

Arthur reacts on instinct, grabbing Eames’ wrist off of his shoulder and pulling it forward. He shifts his weight out to his hip at the same time, trying to catch Eames’ groin and throw him. Eames is too fast, sidestepping the throw and twisting his wrist away, bringing himself directly in front of Arthur in the process.

Arthur goes for the throat, jabbing, but he’s too slow, too weak. Eames snatches Arthur’s wrist, shoving him back so fast he’s stumbling just to keep on his feet. His gown is thrown open even more during the struggle and then he feels the sharp cold of plastic paneling hit his skin.

He's pinned with his back against the wall, a vice like grip on his wrist, and a strong shoulder pressed hard against his chest. He can't smell anything but the spice of the other man's sweat and cologne as he hyperventilates into the bared neck before him.

It's so overwhelming that he can't decide if he wants to kill, faint, or throw up. The nausea spikes and he thinks it will probably be the latter. It takes everything he has to not burst into tears and beg, imagining himself stuttering, mumbling please, please, please over and over again — _Please stop. Don't you know you are killing me? Over and over, every night. Please stop, please stop!_ — it takes a second to realize he's actually saying it out loud. His whispers are desperate, choked and uncontrolled. But he isn't released from the hold. Instead Eames pulls closer, wrapping the arm not holding his wrist behind him and hugging his head tight.

Arthur vaguely remembers a time when he could have already disemboweled someone five different ways from this position.

"Oh, Arthur. What have I done to you?" is whispered into his ear.

They stay like that for a few moments, Arthur whimpering into Eames’ shoulder and feeling the tendons in his shoulder stretch painfully as his chest heaves. Eames is shushing him like a child, petting his hair gently, not giving him an inch fight back.

“Darling, I’m so sorry.” Eames is murmuring. “I know that you are confused and afraid right now, but you need to _trust_ me. We need to get you out of here. And I can’t do that by myself. I’ll be damned if they’re going to lock you in an institution. We both know very well how that turns out for people like us, yeah?”

Arthur nods despite his internal conflict. Eames is too close, clouding his thoughts. He does know though. He’d failed at dying and the only thing as bad as permanent bodily damage and organ failure would to be involuntarily committed right now. He’s calming down, partially due to his inability to move and Eames’ strong fingers stroking through his hair, partially from being utterly drained of any energy he had left.

“It’s a wonder the guards didn’t come in with that little fight you put up,” Eames is saying as he wraps his jacket around Arthur’s shoulders. Arthur doesn’t remember Eames taking the jacket off. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been standing there wrapped up in each other and not moving, but he’s breathing steadily now. The panic is easing and leaving him in a dull haze. Arthur doesn’t have any pants at the moment and the Jacket helps with the cold of the room, so he accepts it without struggle.

“You... hey, Arthur. Pay attention okay? I need you to hold out for a little longer, darling.” Eames snaps his fingers in front of his face because he was drifting, zoning out. Arthur looks up and all he sees is concern in Eames’ eyes.

“You and I are going to go use the restroom, yeah? All you need is an escort to make sure you won’t do anything rash. The guards would prefer I, or anybody, follow you in rather than them having to.”

He’s leading Arthur out the door, holding him steady with an arm wrapped firmly around his waist. Eames’ chats kindly with the guards in fluent and unaccented French, informing them of his, “Mate’s stubborn need to use real toilets and not bedpans.” The guards nod sympathetically. Arthur idly wonders what it’s like waiting outside the door of at risk patients all day long.

They turn the corner of the hallway, Arthur’s bare feet slapping the linoleum with every step. They pass by an empty gurney and some sort of bin. There’s a single occupancy unisex restroom located in the center of the corridor. Eames directs Arthur into it but doesn’t follow.

“I’ll be just a minute, don’t you dare do anything stupid like bashing your head against the wall or anything. And keep the door unlocked.”

Arthur slumps onto the covered toilet as Eames slips the door shut with a click. Eames returns in what Arthur assumes is a few minutes later. Time is vague. He had been staring at the floor trying to piece together how he got here and why the hell Eames is here too. His stomach is knotted up, but he can’t tell if that’s from it being pumped or the returning trepidation over Eames’ presence.

“Put these on. It’s the best I could do, but it’s better than nothing.” Eames shoves a wad of fabric towards him. Arthur takes the offering, finding it to be a pair of penguin-covered scrubs and some thin slippers. He can’t even muster up a grimace at the print. He slips the pants on under his gown. He takes off the jacket around his shoulders and hands it back to Eames. He tries to untie the neck of the gown but can’t quite get the knot undone. Eames steps towards him and Arthur nearly backs into the toilet. He clamps his eyes shut.

“Let me.” Eames says, gently. Taking the strings from Arthur’s fingers, he loosens the ties easily. The gown slips down Arthur’s shoulders and he shivers. The hospital air is cold. He feels exposed, vulnerable with Eames hovering at his neck. But Eames doesn’t do anything. 

He’s not at all like in Arthur’s dreams. Arthur feels no hostility coming from him. His movements are slow and fluid, unlike the angular wrath Arthur’ projection displays. Arthur braces himself with the handicap bar as he slips the footwear on.

“I have a car right in the front of the parking lot, but we may need to run. Are you up for that?”

Arthur nods an affirmative. He’s not really, but he’ll find the strength.

“Right then, follow me. You know the drill.”

They’ve done this a million times before. People will ignore anyone if they act like they own the place, like they know exactly where they are going or where they have to be. Nobody will even question the fact that they’ve never seen them in the building before, that they don’t have proper identification, and that they don’t belong.

Arthur doesn’t look like a doctor but he doesn’t quite look like a patient either with the scrubs. And Eames is all business, taking the lead for once. Arthur falls in line. It feels like he’s back in basic training, staring at the back of someone’s neck and trying to keep up. He’s tired, sore, sick, and trudging on. He’s following the man in front of him because he has to make it to the end.

They make it just past the nurses’ station before they spot one of the guards. He’s obviously looking for them, they would have been far too long in the restroom at this point. Eames slips a hand to Arthur’s elbow as he steers them towards the emergency room doors. Arthur hears the guard call out once before they are both sprinting. In just fifteen feet, his legs feel like gelatin and his throat burns. Arthur makes it out of the door without collapsing, but the parking lot has to be at least fifty more feet away.

Arthur feels the hand grab at his shoulders before he hears the guard’s footsteps behind him. He twists, dodging the grip, but the move puts him off balance and he tumbles to the ground with the guard tumbling down with him. Eames is helping him up before he even stops rolling. Arthur glances back to the guard who is also scrambling to his feet. Eames shoves Arthur forward yelling something indecipherable before he turns his attention to the recovering guard. Arthur runs.

Eames breaks the guards grip with a slashing strike down on his wrists before yanking his arm forward, exposing him for assault. With a quick elbow to the head above the ear the guard drops. Eames hollers for Arthur to go right as he catches up. They reach a black sedan which unlocked already, and are able to close the doors and peel out before the rest of the staff has caught up.

Arthur keels over in the seat, coughing fitfully. He lost his slippers along the way and he’d skinned his arms in the fall. He’s bleeding, but not badly. It’s going to sting later, though. Eames glances over at him worriedly as he drives aggressively through the Paris streets. After he stops coughing, Arthur finally has to ask the question he can’t resolve in his as his thoughts race through his head.

“What are you doing here, Eames?” he bites out, charcoal and bile lacing his words.

Eames looks at him thoughtfully before slowly turning his eyes back to the road. He brushes the fingers of one hand above his lip, his tell for when he’s nervous or upset. Arthur doesn’t demand a response immediately, though he wants to. He doesn’t have the energy to snap and he can tell Eames is collecting his words carefully.

“In a normal situation, I’d say I was saving your life. But as it stands, I think I’m just making up for a rather large mistake I’ve made.”

“You found me. You were following me, at le Sacré-Cœur.”

“Yes.”

“I thought I was going insane.”

Eames goes silent. Arthur can’t tell if he’s stricken at that statement, or if he just didn’t have anything to add. He doesn’t really care. After a few blocks of driving Arthur starts to doze off, before he’s brought back to the present from a very low murmur.

“Do you really dream of me?”

“Every night.”

“I’d be flattered if I didn’t know that it ended you up here.”

Arthur rests his head against the cool window as Eames drives.

***

“I want to show you something.”

Eames is giving him a look, which doesn’t look so much like pleading as it does calm determination mixed with a small amount of sympathy. When Arthur glances down, he realizes that Eames is carrying a PASIV.

Arthur feels his stomach drop. He hasn’t bothered masking his emotions so he’s not surprised when Eames reads the shift immediately. Eames wouldn’t have missed it if Arthur had been trying, though, even if he had been the best actor in the world.

“Please, Arthur, I think this can help.” Eames sets the PASIV down on the floor but doesn’t make to move towards him. He’s learned over the past month, that sudden movements or approaching without expressed consent sets Arthur back. Arthur feels a twinge of regret that the lesson had to be learned at all. He’d nearly broken Eames’ nose the first time.

Eames hasn’t really left his side since their escape from the hospital. Not for any extended period of time anyway, though he does venture out for groceries and supplies. Eames hasn’t been able to properly explain to Arthur why he is here at all.

Before, Arthur thought he couldn’t get far enough away from Eames. He thought he would never find a place where the dreams would leave him alone. He still hasn’t and maybe he never will. But he has become used to Eames being here. He doesn’t jump every time Eames moves anymore, but he does feel unease when Eames approaches. Now, he’s afraid of the day when Eames will leave. Eames will leave without answering why. He will leave one more thing for Arthur to obsess over, to internalize, to agonize about.

Eames drops his hands to his sides, loose and palms up. Arthur recognizes the move. It’s to make Eames seem open, receptive and welcoming. Arthur knows a lot of Eames’ tricks. But the look on Eames’ face, the sadness barely hidden in his stormy gray eyes, that’s not a trick. And if it is, Eames is a far better con man than Arthur has ever imagined.

Arthur has plenty of imagination despite what Eames has said in the past. The last year has been a testament to that fact. He stares at Eames from his position on the couch, curled up in the corner in sweats and a t-shirt with no inclination to move. They stare. They stare until Arthur’s jaw aches because he has been grinding his teeth without realizing.

Eames is the first to give in. He drops his hands completely defeated and bends to pick up the case. Instead of taking it with him though, he places it in the corner, as if he thinks they’re going to use it later, though Arthur knows they won’t. He doesn’t want to go under. He can’t.

“I can wait, Arthur. I _will_ wait. We will get through this. I had just hoped that I could expedite the process.” Eames swallows, his Adam's apple lurching up and down. “I hope...” he trails off, glancing out the window at nothing. Then Eames walks out of the door.

He leave Arthur on the couch, wondering what he wants to do with the PASIV and how is anything Eames has to show him going to help at all.


	11. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

Eames can be extremely charming. He can be extremely convincing when he wants something. More than anything, he wants to be in that room, sitting with Arthur until he wakes up. So he slides into the role, dashing boyfriend who’s desperately wanting to see if his love is all right. Wooing the nurses with humble submissiveness. Asking politely for them to allow him to stay, saying he understands if they can’t. Pleading that he needs to be there.

He’s thankful that women have a soft spot for romance stories, no matter how tragic. It’s one of their better qualities: empathy and sympathy. The nurses allow him to stay. He sits in the corner chewing on his fingernails, caring nothing for falling back into the bad habit as he stares at Arthur’s sleeping form.

They’ve cleaned as much of the charcoal away from Arthur’s face as possible, but there are still streaks of it across his skin. Arthur is lying so still it’s almost easy to picture him as hooked up to a PASIV, dreaming. But the tube in his arm is an I.V. and not the dream machine. The steady beat of his heart is pulsed out on digital monitors.

Eames stays. He sits for hours, waiting.

When Arthur wakes, Eames can’t seem to move. He stays silent, stunned until Arthur pulls the I.V. from his arm and tries to stand. It’s obvious that Arthur intends to get out of here, but Eames can tell he won’t make it. Not without help.

He clears his throat and speaks. Arthur nearly keels over and Eames is on his feet before he even realizes that he’s moving. He’s holding Arthur up, trying to calm him through his coughing fit and then Arthur grabs his hand and yanks him forward, throwing him off balance.

Eames recovers quickly before Arthur can throw him down, but then Arthur’s hands are coming straight at his throat. Eames blocks, instinct taking over, and he wraps Arthur’s arm back behind his body, shoving him backwards towards the wall. When he has Arthur pinned, he pauses silently willing Arthur to calm down. Trying to sooth him with kind words.

Arthur is sobbing, pleading with him. He’s so small in Eames’ arms. Eames shushes him, stroking his hair gently. Arthur babbles and cries, but eventually he relaxes into Eames’ arms. This worries Eames even more than finding Arthur on the floor of his apartment, passed out in a pool of his own vomit with an empty prescription bottle next to his head. Arthur is giving in. It’s clear he’s terrified of Eames, but he’s given up fighting.

He has to get Arthur out of here. Psyche wards are dangerous places for dreamers. He wouldn’t wish being trapped in one on his worst enemies. Eames doesn’t know if he could handle society telling him his life isn’t real, his job isn’t real. Half the time he has to remind himself of that fact anyway.

Eames coaxes Arthur up, telling him they need to get out. Arthur nods his agreement and Eames is contemplating a plan. They can sneak out, so long as he can get Arthur out of this room, can get him past the guards enough to make a break for it, and if Arthur can stay standing for long enough to get to the car.

He leads him to the restroom he saw on the way in, placating the guards with a sympathy inducing tall tale of Arthur’s modesty. He reluctantly leaves Arthur alone to find some clothes and when Arthur is dressed, they make a break for the hospital doors. They barely make it out of the lot. Eames has to knock a guard out. After, they drive around Paris, switching cars a few times to avoid being spotted by police.

***

It’s been a month since Eames stole Arthur from the hospital. They’re in a hotel that they’ve rented long term. It’s a suite with two beds and a living area. He wanted them to be on neutral ground. They can’t go back to Arthur’s home, not after their little stunt with the hospital. But Eames doesn’t want to bring Arthur anywhere loaded, anywhere personal. They stay in a hotel because both of them are used to it the way they are always traveling.

He stays and watches over Arthur, forcing the man to acclimate to his presence. Arthur doesn’t bristle every time he enters the room anymore, but he’d nearly received a broken nose for entering Arthur’s personal space too suddenly early on. They’ve both learned Arthur’s boundaries now.

Eames waits, but he feels restless. Arthur isn’t getting much better. Sure, he’s no longer jumpy at Eames presence, but he also hasn’t left the room. Not once. Arthur sits around silently in his sweatpants and doesn’t even watch the television. He just sits, and stares, and barely sleeps.

There’s a list, now, of _any other times_ that Eames has built up. Any other time Arthur with mussed hair, sitting around in a in a t-shirt would have been a much appreciated sight. Because any other time Eames would have been _allowed_ to see it, by Arthur’s very deliberate choice. Any other time Eames would have jumped at the chance to simply watch Arthur wake up and eat breakfast. Any other time he would have loved to see Arthur on the couch not working, idling completely without responsibility. Any other time he would have appreciated being allowed in Arthur’s presence when the man was displaying any kind of vulnerability.

Eames tries to think of ways to bridge the divide between them. But he can’t come up with anything meaningful to explain how he feels. His words mean nothing when it comes down to it. The only thing he keeps coming back to is his dreams. If only he could show Arthur how much he actually cared. Because of everything Eames has gathered from the bits that Arthur has revealed is that Arthur couldn’t handle the fact that his friend killed him so coldly. Arthur couldn’t trust anyone again, because trusted friends don’t do that to a person.

Eames knows, he knows that’s true. He’d give anything to take it back. But he needs Arthur to know that he did care. Does care. That Arthur means something to him. That he will never make that mistake again.

Eames tries; he tries so hard to get Arthur to go under with him, so he can show him the dream. He wants to show Arthur something, anything. But Arthur doesn’t trust him. Eames can’t blame him. He just has to be patient. He can be patient. He can do this, for Arthur, no matter how long it takes.

*** They’re walking through the grass, morning dew still clinging to the green blades. The sun is rising beyond the hill in a pink and yellow glow. Silver glistens off tree leaves and the air is crisp. The scene is more pure, more ethereal than usual. It’s tinged with less sadness.

Eames wanted to make it beautiful, as beautiful as possible. He’s not an architect, no, but he has a vivid imagination. He can make this more than it is if he concentrates.

Arthur follows him, unsure. He barely glances around, doesn’t seem to notice the setting, but Eames ignores this because finally Arthur is here. Finally, Arthur has allowed Eames to take him under. And Eames will try to show him, try to make him understand.

They make their way to the center of the field where the ground is freshly upturned, an obvious mark on the pristine landscape. Eames stops about a meter away, waiting for Arthur to catch up the small distance that he has lagged behind. He can feel Arthur come to a stop next to him and glances up.

“What is this?” Arthur asks.

Suddenly Eames is unsure. _Will Arthur understand?_ He sucks in a breath and lays it out. Because all he can do is say his piece and hope that something comes of it.

“This is where I buried you. _Bury you_ every time I dream.”

The grave opens, revealing the hollow expanse of dirt and rocks. There’s nothing inside this time because Arthur is here, alive. But the grave is the same: shallow, dark, ominous, and sad. It’s a wound in Eames’ mind. A wound made of Arthur, of Arthur’s pain.

“I don’t understand.” Arthur says, voice just barely a whisper.

“I couldn’t leave you. I couldn’t leave your body. It was just a dream, but I couldn’t bear it. I had to do something.”

“You buried me?”

“It’s quite literally the least I could do. I should have never let you think I didn’t care. I should never have killed you like that, Arthur.”

“But you did.”

“Yes. And I don’t want your forgiveness. I don’t deserve that. But I can’t bear to see you like this. You don’t deserve this. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

Eames turns to Arthur and tentatively reaches out, leveling his hand with Arthur’s face for a brief moment before stroking over his cheek with the pad of his thumb. Arthur flinches at the touch, but otherwise doesn't react or move away. Eames traces over the bone, remembering so clearly how it had been crushed, ruining Arthur’s structure.

He moves his hand to the back of Arthur’s neck, resting it lightly and fingering the curls at the nape of Arthur’s neck. He takes a step closer to Arthur slowly, allowing Arthur to adjust if needed. Arthur doesn’t pull away, but he’s rigid beneath Eames’ touch. Eames looks Arthur directly in the eye and Arthur doesn’t break the gaze. He stares right at Eames, eyes wide with uncertainty. Eames leans in closer and closer, until his lips are just hovering above Arthur’s.

“I’m so sorry,” Eames whispers. He can feel Arthur’s breathing hitch, stuttering hot and wet against his skin. He pets Arthur’s neck again reassuringly and closes the gap. He plants one delicate, chaste kiss on Arthur’s lips before pulling back just enough to look into Arthur’s eyes again.

“I do care. I always have,” he admits.

When they emerge from the dream, Arthur doesn’t move. He doesn’t remove the needle from his wrist at all. Eames gives him a few minutes before realizing that Arthur doesn’t intend to take it out. So Eames delicately removes the line and swabs Arthur’s skin with an alcohol pad. Arthur doesn’t so much as twitch. He watches Eames with guarded eyes.

Eames wants to scream. He wants to tear apart the world with his voice. He wants to drain his lungs of all oxygen until he chokes and passes out. He wants more than anything to shatter the silence of the room.

Arthur has regressed, and that too is Eames’ fault. Arthur curls himself into a ball on the bed and just lies there staring at the wall. Eames only wanted Arthur to know that he cared. That he always cared, that Arthur didn’t have to be afraid of him. He wanted Arthur to know that he never meant to hurt him and would take it all back if he could.

Eames wants to scream because he was so blind, thinking that showing Arthur how much he cares would somehow fix the point man, that somehow all this could be better. He’s pushed Arthur too far.

Eames doesn’t know what to do anymore. He has no other plan. He doesn’t know where to go from here. He can’t leave Arthur. He will never leave him like this, afraid that Arthur will indeed kill himself if left alone. So he calls the one person he has never wanted to deal with again, the man who put his problems before everyone else's safety, who nearly sent an entire team into limbo.

Eames calls Dominic Cobb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Authors Notes: So this chapter was a bit strange. I've actually done the suicide toilet watch with a friend before. I remember thinking the exact same thing Arthur does about the guards. They assign a guard to at-risk patients, and they just sit outside the door, for hours. I'm sure they have other sections of the hospital to monitor and all, but they stay there, making sure the crazies don't do anything stupid. And the doctors and guards are very appreciative when you follow your friend to the restroom so they don't have to watch a stranger take a piss. I'm sure the doctors are used to it, but it has to be a relief. And it has to be a relief to have someone you know, and not a stranger doctor/guard to watch you piss when you are a patient.
> 
> And in my experience hospitals are always fucking freezing.
> 
> I also relied on first hand experience with the fighting in this chapter. I recalled on times being my brother's wrestling practice dummy, when he was a kid. And my mom taught me some self defense. My boyfriend was also kind enough to have me act out some of the moves with him to see if you could actually catch someone and bash their head in quickly. I wanted it to not be a drawn out fight. They had to make it to the car quickly, no time for rolling about or throwing multiple punches. My boyfriend is very understanding and I love him.


	12. The Consequences of Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French to English translation is in the end notes for this chapter.

They don’t talk. Eames doesn’t leave, but he doesn’t quite stay, not in the same way as before, where he was taking care of Arthur. Now he’s like a ghost: hovering at a distance, careful to not interfere for fear of being discovered, but still keeping watch. Eames only ever leaves for fifteen-minute intervals to fetch food, or get supplies. 

Arthur is not thankful for this.

For three days Eames watches him with a look of sadness so deep-set that Arthur can’t bring himself make eye contact anymore. Arthur can tell that Eames is giving up. Arthur doesn’t eat and Eames doesn’t try to make him. Eames has stopped doing anything other than making sure he’s not gone long enough for Arthur to do something about his state of being alive. Eames cannot put him back together and Arthur would rather he just leave than stay out of pity.

All Arthur wants to do is die.

But all of his weapons are at his apartment. He has no pills here. He could strangle himself with the bed sheets, but the idea of a long asphyxiation without the ability to break his own neck puts a stop to that. The idea of being caught, blue, with bulging eyes and broken blood vessels, is also unappealing. He thinks maybe he should be happy he still has a shred of dignity left, but then he just thinks he’s being pathetic and vain when he so very clearly has an out.

Lost in thought, Arthur doesn’t even hear when there is a knock at the door. His survival instincts at the moment are zero. In his normal state Arthur would have had his gun in hand and a cautious ear to the wall — never the door if you don’t want to be shot through it, or your face bashed in if they kick it. As it is, he only realizes someone else is in the room because the air shifts with palpable tension.

“Cobb?” Arthur croaks out when he realizes who’s here. His voice is hoarse from disuse.

Eames and Dom are having a conspiratorial conversation, complete with furtive glances and tense hands run through hair. Cobb glances up at the mention of his name. He gives a grim smile. Eames chews on his fingers nervously. Arthur has no idea why Cobb is here. Eames made it perfectly clear that he would be fine never seeing Dom again, seeing as how _he nearly dropped everyone into limbo_ during the Fischer job.

Arthur knows that Eames doesn’t appreciate others gambling with his life. Arthur never blamed him for that. Eames seems to think that Arthur followed Dom around like a lap dog, but the truth is Dom had been relatively fine up until the very last months before the Cobol job. Dom was a great extractor, always had been since he started out militarizing people. Arthur had been excited to work with him when Cobb was finally going rogue, on the wrong side of the law.

After inception, Dom went back to his children giving up illegal extraction. When Dom stepped out of the game confrontations never had to happen. He and Eames could continue working together without conflict. Last Arthur heard, Dom was only doing private consultations and again militarizing the wealthy—mainly to people Saito referred. Arthur heard that Cobb was teaching architecture at an art college on the side.

Dom is looking at him with a particularly calculating gaze. His hands are in his pockets like they always are when he’s thinking. Arthur wonders if he still carries Mal’s totem. Arthur knows every squint in Cobb’s arsenal and he knows that this one is Cobb appraising him, taking in every detail of his appearance and actions. 

It’s not like Cobb can judge him. Arthur has seen the man at his worst, when Cobb was clutching a cocked gun near his head like it was a lifeline as he’d spun that top over and over. He’s seen the desperation in Cobb’s eyes. The only difference between them is that Cobb still had the will to fight. Cobb had his children to get back to. Arthur has nothing.

After the brief appraisal Cobb seems to make up his mind. Arthur sees the weariness he had gotten used to before inception creeping back into Dom’s features. He approaches carefully, like Arthur is some kind of wild animal or temperamental child. Crouching with hands still in his pockets, Cobb stares at his feet when he speaks, so softly that Arthur can barely hear him.

“Tu ne vois donc pas le monde ? Tu ne vois pas comme tout en fait partie ? Il est là, à tes pieds. Il suffit que tu fasses un pas en avant. Souviens-toi simplement que lorsque tu ne contrôles pas tout, le monde continue quand même. Si tu t'y promènes, il te révélera sa beauté. Il t'ouvrira grand les bras.”

Arthur’s resolve breaks at hearing Mal’s words, at the memory whispered to him again after so many years. She had taught him what trust was, what letting go was. She had taught him how to let good things happen to him instead of fighting everything tooth and nail. Tears well in his eyes and then they turn to rivers streaming down his cheeks as he sobs openly. Arthur clutches his head in his hands and leans forward, heedless of the mucus and spit running from his face as he bawls.

Arthur doesn’t know how long he cries for, but when he comes back to his senses he feels exhausted. His face feels swollen and sticky. Cobb is sitting next to him, arm wrapped around his shoulders. He realizes he’s shaking uncontrollably. Arthur looks up, the room distorted through his tears, and sees Eames fidgeting, shifting his weight on his feet as he chews on his nails. It looks as if Eames is going to come out of his skin, like he’s barely hanging onto control.

“Arthur, come with me to California,” Cobb says.

Arthur leans back into the sofa, resting his head on the back of it, exhausted. He closes his eyes and tries to clear his thoughts. He had barely left his apartment these last months. He hasn’t left the hotel since they arrived. He hasn’t been on a plane since he arrived in Paris. But what could it hurt? He has nothing left to lose. He’d nearly died by his own hands just over a month ago.

“Yeah, okay,” he breathes. Cobb’s arm wraps tighter around his shoulder, which makes Arthur uncomfortable. For all that he and Cobb were friends, intimate gestures are foreign. Arthur, at the moment, would be happy if nobody ever touched him again.

“Cobb, may I speak to you.” Eames asks. Arthur is relieved when Cobb’s arm pulls away. He presses himself into the corner of the sofa, sinking as far into it as he can. Cobb gets up and Eames ushers him into the suite’s dining nook. Arthur doesn’t bother to eavesdrop. His mind is racing at the thought of going to California.

***

“What are you doing?” Arthur asks, hovering in the doorway. He watches warily as Eames paces back and forth across the room, gathering strewn clothing and scattered belongings into bags. Eames looks up at him, face distorted with something akin to grief across it. He doesn’t know what Eames and Cobb spoke of, but Eames has been on edge ever since.

Eames schools his look into something placid and takes a breath. He deftly folds a garish shirt into his bag.

“Packing, Arthur,” he says neutrally.

“You’re coming with?”

Offense flickers briefly over Eames’ face. “Of course I am, Arthur. I’m not leaving you again.”

Arthur turns and leaves the room.

He tries packing a the few articles of clothing Eames had managed to somehow obtain from his apartment. After haphazardly folding one shirt, he gives up. Arthur just doesn’t care. He shoves the rest of his belonging in the case messily and lays down on the bed.

He’s nervous about the trip. He’s surprised to find that he’s somewhat relieved that Eames is coming with, though. He has no idea why. He has no idea what he’s going to do in California. Cobb knows grief and pain, though. If anyone can understand, it will be Dom. And Arthur will get to see the children. That might actually be good for him. He hasn’t seen them since Mal’s funeral.

Then Arthur starts thinking about Mal’s funeral, her death, and tears well up in his eyes again. He buries his face into the comforter of the bed and lets the tears slide down over his nose. He wishes Mal were here. He misses her, misses the way she was before something in her turned dark. She had a way of making everything seem like it would all turn out for the better.

But she’s not here. He’s going to California to visit the home where she was once happy. Arthur doesn’t know what Cobb has in mind, but he thinks that anything has to be better than what he’s doing now. His eyes slip shut and he drifts to sleep, the salt of his tears leaving stains on his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French Translation thanks to [anatsuno](http://anatsuno.livejournal.com)
> 
> Don’t you see the world? Don’t you see how it holds everything in it? It’s open at your feet. All you have to do is take a step. All you have to do is let yourself remember that even when you aren’t in control, the world will continue on. If you walk through it, it will reveal its beauty. It will open its arms to you.


	13. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

“This is Cobb.” The greeting is clipped, impatient. Eames can hear a child shouting in the background.

“Hello, Cobb.” Eames says. He can practically feel the air come to a still through the phone line; he can imagine Cobb’s shoulders tensing as the man recognizes his voice.

“What’s happened?” Cobb demands. Eames realizes that he probably thinks someone has died. It would be the only reason for Eames to contact him. 

Though they made it out of Fischer’s dream safely, Eames had been furious that Cobb gambled with his life, with all of their lives. Sure, Eames gambled with his own life regularly, but that was on his terms, when he knew the spread. He didn’t bloody well tangle other people into it without telling them.

Cobb tried to set up a job a while after Inception. Something that was short and sweet, just to stay in the game. He didn’t want to leave his kids, but he still wanted to work. Eames had refused flat out. Dom was an adrenaline junkie, always pushing the limits. Eames isn’t surprised that Dom and Mal found themselves in limbo now that he knows the reason. Those two were like a tornado, swirling around each other, circling danger like it couldn’t touch them. Irresponsible, he had always thought, and that was something coming from him.

It was why they were so successful, in their time. It’s why they were the best. It’s why Miles let his daughter experiment with something so untested, so dangerous. He couldn’t stop them, nobody could.

Eames didn’t want any part of Cobb trying to reclaim a position in dream sharing. He didn’t want any part of Cobb’s love affair of testing limits. He didn’t want to be involved the next time Cobb found himself in danger of losing his children. Thankfully, Cobb seemed to take the hint when Eames and Ariadne had refused and Arthur had claimed to be too busy. Cobb resigned himself to corporate militarization and teaching architecture then. That was just as well in Eames mind: safe for the children, safe for Cobb, safe for everyone else.

Eames clears his throat uncomfortably. “I need your help,” he says.

***

Arthur doesn’t get any worse in the three days it takes Cobb to get to Paris, but he also doesn’t get any better. Eames leaves him alone and doesn’t interfere at all. It’s clear what Eames; interference is doing and he can’t in good conscience push Arthur any farther. But he won’t leave Arthur in the hotel alone, not for long at least. He goes to get food, because room service has a very limited menu when you stay for longer than a week, but he’s back before Arthur can muster the motivation to do anything stupid.

When Cobb finally arrives, he takes one look at Arthur before giving Eames a truly disdainful stare. His lips purse together in a tight line before he grits out a snappish greeting.

“What the fuck is going on, Eames?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I suggest you start now.”

Eames sighs. This isn’t going to be easy, but he called Cobb for a reason. If anyone can help Arthur overcome this, it’s Cobb. For all that Eames dislikes how Cobb endangered the team and took unfathomable risks, he respects that Cobb overcame his issues to get things done. Eames doesn’t know how he would handle himself with the memory of someone he loved stalking around in his mind. He’s never been in limbo.

Eames starts explaining the Weiss job: what happened, Arthur’s reaction, Eames’ decision to leave him be. He details Arthur’s behavior on the Colombia job, the last months of hunting Arthur down, of his reaction to the crowd at the basilique, of the hospital, and taking Arthur under only for him to come out worse.

Cobb listens, nodding along. When Eames finishes his summary, Cobb sets his jaw and narrows his eyes before looking up at Eames. 

“So, you’re telling me, you just left him alone after seeing his reaction in the hotel room? If Arthur was fine he would have been ordering you around, not avoiding you. You’re the behavioral expert, what the hell were you thinking?”

Cobb glances over at Arthur who has seemed to come out of his daze at the raised voices.

“I … I don’t know,” Eames huffs resignedly chewing on his thumb again. He glances over at Arthur as well, the guilt knotting his stomach again.

“The only reason I didn’t disintegrate after Mal’s death is because I had Arthur to hold me together.” Cobb’s voice is just barely a whisper now. There’s something vulnerable in it, something Eames hasn’t ever heard before. Everyone could see the cracks in Cobb’s facade when he had been on the run. They could tell he was desperate, reckless, but he’d never let his guard down like this. He never admitted that he was barely hanging on. One statement and Eames knew the exact reason Arthur had stayed with Cobb, even when Cobb was putting him in danger. 

Arthur knew.

“Sometimes I wonder if he did it for me, or for Mal. She took care of him, you know? Treated him like a brother. He would have run himself into the ground had he stayed in the military. They had him on so many chemicals. Had him paranoid, he didn’t trust anyone else to do things right, worked harder than anyone else, took on too much of the burden. They could have tested anything on him and he never would have fought it. They’d have kept using him until they put him in a coma, or worse. He didn’t have anyone until he had us.”

Eames looks at Cobb and sees a lifetime of weariness in every line of his face: every year of limbo, every day without Mal. He can see the grief in the slow bob of Cobb’s Adam’s Apple as he swallows thickly. 

Eames doesn’t feel worthy of this knowledge.

“Cobb?” Arthur asks drawing both of their attention.

It’s the first time he’s said anything in days. Eames can hear the roughness of his unused voice. Cobb walks over and stands in front of Arthur nervously. He seems to be mulling something over, some big decision. Then he sinks down into a squat, bowing his head and whispering. Cobb says something in French, so soft that Eames can only pick up a few words.

Arthur bursts into tears.

The sound of Arthur crying is the most distressing thing Eames has ever heard. It makes his skin crawl. He wants to turn away, to run away, but he can’t. He doesn’t move. He’s frozen to the spot and chews on his thumb until he tastes the copper tang of blood. His cuticle is demolished, stinging with pain. Eames doesn’t really notice, because Arthur is sobbing, clutching his head and wailing at the floor.

Arthur cries for a full ten minutes. Cobb has since left his place crouching near the floor to sit and wrap an arm around Arthur protectively. He gently rocks Arthur back and forth until Arthur eventually calms. Eames hasn’t left his spot near the door. He doesn’t trust himself to move; he wouldn’t know where his legs would take him. He stares at the broken tableau before him and wonders if anything will ever be like it was before.

Cobb asks Arthur if he’ll come with him to California, and Arthur agrees. Just like that, Arthur lets Cobb in. The pang of jealously is only outweighed by the relief that Arthur still has some fight left, some willingness to allow for help. Arthur seems to have calmed enough to look uncomfortable at Cobb’s proximity so Eames calls Cobb away to go over the logistics of the trip. Arthur hasn’t left the hotel once since they’ve been here. How the hell is he going to handle a transcontinental flight?

*** Arthur confronts Eames when he finds him packing his bag. It makes Eames question if he’s doing the right thing again. He really doesn’t know if he should or shouldn’t tag along. He wonders if he’ll be doing more harm than good. But Eames decides to stick it out, at least until Arthur seems comfortable, stable maybe, even if it’s only for his own peace of mind. 

Eames steps out of the apartment before they head to the airport. When he returns, Cobb is absently flipping through channels on the television. It’s less than two hours until their flight, they should be leaving now, so he’s a little worried to not see Arthur sitting on the couch next to Cobb. Cobb seems to pick up on his train of thought.

“He’s asleep. It looks like he needs it so I changed our flight. We have four hours.”

Eames nods his head in approval. Arthur really does need the sleep; he doesn’t get more than a few hours a night. When he does sleep Eames can tell he has nightmares. He doesn’t shout or anything, but Eames is a light sleeper and can hear Arthur move about the room. When Arthur startles awake and scrambles for his totem looking like a frightened teenager, like he has no control, it bothers Eames. He hates to think of Arthur as vulnerable, lost.

Eames sets his paper bag down on the desk. He sits with Cobb on the suite’s sofa, sighing as he collapses onto the cushions. He’s exhausted. He feel like there’s nothing he can do, but he can’t not do anything either. Living with Arthur twenty four hours a day just to make sure he stays alive is daunting. But Eames would do it for the rest of his life to make up for his mistake. Cobb gives him a worried look.

“Are _you_ ok, Eames?”

Eames isn’t. But that doesn’t matter. Arthur matters. He doesn’t answer. Cobb nods once; he taking the hint that Eames doesn’t feel like talking about it.

“What’s in the bag?” Cobb asks instead, glancing up at the desk.

“Sedatives.”

“You think those are a good idea?”

“No. But if Arthur starts having a panic attack … we can’t really risk getting detained.”

Cobb nods mutely, dragging a hand through his hair. Eames notices that he wears it ungelled now. Everything about Cobb is a little looser. He seems calmer, but then again the last time Eames saw Cobb was when Cobb’s entire future was on the line.

They sit in silence, letting the sounds of the television fill the room. It’s uncomfortable, but Eames is too exhausted to do anything about it. Cobb seems agreeable enough to let it go. Eames will get Arthur to California and go from there. Anything has to be better than this.

Eames mentally goes over a checklist for the trip. His identity doesn’t have any warrants here or in the United States. He’s fairly certain that Arthur’s current passport is clean. He doesn’t have the time to make anything new, so he’ll have to trust that Arthur’s months away from criminal activity is enough buffer if his passport somehow does have a flag. He’s packed. He’ll check Arthur’s bag a little later. He has sedatives of a very strong nature, glad he has a contact in France still. Not many of his mates are still dealing and he’s lucky the one who is specializes in pharmaceuticals and not street drugs.

He needs to call Ariadne.

Eames pulls his phone from his pocket and dials her number. Cobb gives him an interested glance. He ignores him. Cobb will figure it out soon enough. Ariadne picks up on the second ring.

“Everything okay?” She asks, straight to the point, not even an hello.

“Yes, yes. Just letting you know that we’re heading to California. Didn’t think leaving the country without telling you would be a good idea.”

“California?”

“We’re, staying with Cobb.”

“What?! What the hell, Eames?” 

He sees Cobb wince at hearing Ariadne’s screech. Ariadne is just as angry and distrustful of Cobb as Eames is. They’d had several conversations about her feelings on Cobb when she got over her sense of accomplishment and satisfaction over inception. She had known more about how unstable Cobb was at the time, but hadn't known about limbo.

“Calm down, please. He’s not getting better, Ariadne. I didn’t know what else to do.”

She huffs a sigh over the telephone line, not arguing but making her dissatisfaction known. “I’ll be there in a few weeks. I have a job right now, but as soon as it’s over …”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“I am not leaving you to deal with Arthur and Cobb alone. No arguments.”

“Fine,” he relents. He’s in no mood to fight, especially over something he would lose anyway. There’s no stopping her when her mind is set.

“Okay. Okay, Eames. I have to go. I’ll see you soon.” Eames hums confirmation. He feels utterly defeated, like he can’t control anything that is happening to him, or to Arthur. He’s helpless against everything, including Ariadne.

“It will be okay, Eames,” she says. When he doesn’t respond she hangs up.


	14. The Consequences of Trust

“And how long have you been dealing with these issues?”

Arthur takes his gaze away from his hands, which are resting in his lap. The soft scribble of pen on paper breaks up the near silence in the room. He can faintly hear traffic going by outside, but it’s intermittent; they’re on a quiet block.

The office is small but comfortably decorated. It’s outfitted in warm, rich colors, and the furnishing is more modern than he would have thought any mental health care office would ever be. It’s bright and sunny, but not overly so. Cream-colored blinds are drawn shut making the office glow.

Arthur had expected a pretentious, overstuffed chaise lounge chair and wood paneled walls; or at least a rich, dark desk neatly organized with brass penholders and an expensive desk lamp. Instead he finds a cluttered—but not messy—glass desk covered in colorful plastic containers and framed photos. It’s pushed back against one wall. Potted plants sit by the windows and near the desk. The small circle of comfortable chairs they sit in are backed into another corner of the room. He sits closest to the wall, instinctively keeping a sight line to the door and his back protected.

“Just over a year,” Arthur answers. _One year, two weeks, and five days,_ he thinks to himself.

“Mr. Cobb and Mr. Eames gave me a little of your history. Why didn’t you seek help sooner?”

The question isn’t admonishing at all. Arthur knows Dr. Steffe is a professional because on its own it could easily be interpreted as chiding, but her tone doesn’t allow for it at all. It’s genuine and tinged with professional concern.

“Mental health care is not something that is usually friendly towards my profession,” he says sardonically.

“Yes, but surely you must know about the developing specialty in Dream Share Psychology, Mr. Reznik.”

She doesn’t sound offended, but curious. She doesn’t sound like Arthur just demeaned her career with a flippant comment. Arthur is having a hard time dealing with how straightforward she is. It would be so much easier to keep his walls up if she acted as if she had any amount of ego over her job. Instead she seems open, and worse, actually interested.

“Please, call me Arthur.”

“Does the use of your assumed name make you uncomfortable?”

“No. It’s just easier. Everyone calls me Arthur.”

“Is this your way of seeming approachable?”

Arthur’s lips thin unhappily. He feels outmatched. The only other person who does this to him is Eames, but at least Eames doesn’t talk about it. He files his observations away. Arthur remembers the first time he noticed exactly how much Eames knew about him. Eames had brought him coffee just how he liked it, and left him alone for the day when he had been feeling particularly irritable. It had been just what Arthur needed. Arthur never had to tell Eames anything; the man just knew.

That was a long time ago.

“How did you know it was a fake name?” He asks, drifting back from his thoughts.

“Please don’t deflect, Arthur. I know that most of what goes on in dreaming is illegal. I’d appreciate, from now on, that you treat me as if I’m not naive, and I will do as much as I can for you.”

Arthur sighs in defeat. He’s never enjoyed arrogance, has often went out of his way to prove those who display it wrong somehow, but he’s tired. He’s been tired. And this seems like she’s reaching out instead of trying to assert a sense of power.

“I … didn’t know who I could trust. I have never vetted a psychologist before, for anyone.”

Arthur toys with the sleeve of his shirt nervously. He feels utterly dissected and helpless to control his situation. He feels exposed and uncomfortable. He wishes he could dislike this doctor, so he could shut down and not have to deal with his problems. But it’s not really an option with Dom now in the mix and Eames still sticking around like he actually cares.

“Let me assure you, Arthur, that I’m very professional. I’m familiar with dreaming, including the known psychological effects. I stay updated with new studies. I’m bound by a professional code of ethics as well as the law, though I know that fact will not assure you as much as I wish it would. I’ve been treating Dom for a while now and I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress. I hope that’s enough for you, because it’s obvious that you need help.”

Arthur sighs heavily. He has no other options. As much as he doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to delve too deeply into his own emotional distress, he has nowhere else to go. And he knows he can’t live like this much longer. He’s already tried to end it once. It’s either this attempt at therapy, or death.

“It’s not, but I’m willing to try. I can’t live like this anymore.”

***

“How are you feeling today, Arthur?” Dr. Steffe asks.

“Today is better.”

Eames drives Arthur to therapy every Tuesday and Thursday. It’s been a few weeks and Arthur has acclimated to living with Cobb and the kids, as much as he thinks he’s going to. It’s hard being around the children, having to put on a good face. Sometimes he’s just not up to it and stays in his room the entire day. But it is better.

It’s good being around Cobb again. He remembers they way they were friends a long time ago, before Mal died. With the way that Cobb played fast and loose with his life while on the run, Arthur has somehow forgotten that Cobb really was a good father.

It is also helpful being around two people who are of no threat to him. Two little kids who have dealt with grief enough to leave him alone when he really needs it, but who still bug him to play enough to keep him from completely sinking far into his own head again.

“Good, good. I want to talk about the Weiss job again.”

“I don’t want to today.”

“Arthur, attacking this head on is the best therapy. We’ve gone over the statistics, the methods, and the case studies. You need to be honest with what the real problem is and I don’t think we’ve gotten to the heart of it yet. I can’t help you if you won’t let me. Please.”

They’ve been doing this for weeks now. He tells her about the dream and about the beating. He tells her how it felt physically to endure the pain of having your face crushed while you can’t do anything about it. He tells her of the panic he felt when he knew it wouldn’t be a quick death. He tells her about the fear that it would happen again.

“We’ve gone over it. I suffered a very painful death, but I didn’t die because it was a dream. I wasn’t meant to remember something like this. That’s it. I’ll get over it,” Arthur bites out.

Dr. Steffe gives him what would be a frustrated look on anyone less sympathetic. Arthur has found that she doesn’t back down, not when she knows she doesn’t have to. They’ve only hit that barrier where she has backed off a few times. He should have learned this by now, but he’s stubborn and pushes back anyway.

“You’re always more reluctant on your _good_ days,” she says with a little frustration. “Yes we’ve gone over the pain, and the fear aspects. But you’ve said yourself, you’re used to it. You accepted that it was _necessary to your mission._ So what changed that? You’re a very tough man, Arthur. I can tell. You’ve been through pain before. This isn’t a culmination, a straw that broke the camel’s back type of situation, and I can’t help you until you tell me what the real issue is.”

Arthur doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what she wants to hear. Does she want to hear that it was Eames this did it to him? That it’s the man who faithfully drops him off at the office every few days, the man that has been listed as one of two emergency contacts, is the person who put him here. How could that admission make a difference?

He doesn’t say anything. They sit for the next thirty minutes, not speaking. Arthur would feel vindicated in his selfish act to keep his secret if Dr. Steffe seemed restless or annoyed. She just sits quietly looking out the window, or back at him, letting silence fill the room as if it’s not uncomfortable.

When the session is over, Eames is waiting in the parking lot as usual. Arthur signs himself out at the desk. His shoulders slump forward, ruining his posture. He’s tired all the time. The motivation to do anything just doesn’t exist anymore. Today was useless. It seems like most of his days are useless.

“You’re lucky,” the receptionist says.

“I’m sorry?” 

Arthur looks up at her, confused. The woman just eyes him fondly from behind her glasses, purple-painted lips drawn up in a smile. Her teeth are a blindingly white against her chocolate skin.

“Your boyfriend, he cares. Most patients don’t have anyone, or if they do, they’re just dropped off like a sack of laundry at a dry cleaner. It’s hard for everyone. But he’s here for you every appointment.”

He glances out the door, at Eames parked in the first row of the lot, sitting in the rented car.

“He’s not my boyfriend. He … he’s … he just drops me off.”

The receptionist gives him a disbelieving hum. “He doesn’t just drop you off, honey, he stays the entire time, waiting for you.”

Arthur frowns, brows furling in perplexed frustration. He doesn’t know what to make of her statement. Why would Eames sit in a parking lot for an hour when he could be out doing something in the city? He finishes signing the time on the clipboard, and then heads out to the car.

***

Ariadne arrives a few days later. She apologizes to Eames for being delayed; Arthur didn’t know she was even coming. He watches them hug as Cobb drags her bags to the third guest room. Cobb isn’t surprised to see her here, so Arthur guesses that he’s the last to know she was coming.

There was a time when he knew where each member of his team was, when they moved, and what jobs they are on. He knew their alternate identities, their extra addresses, and their enemy’s whereabouts. He tries not to feel utterly useless, now out of the loop, but doesn’t succeed.

Instead of greeting Ariadne, he makes his way to the back yard, a little overwhelmed and a lot frustrated. He admits he’s made a lot of progress but it’s still difficult. He’s spent a year avoiding everyone he knows, and now nearly everyone he cares about is under the same roof. He sits on the edge of the patio, staring off into the untended garden at the edge of the fence.

“Arthur?”

He turns to see Phillipa standing in the sliding door. She looks uncertain, like she’s afraid of something. 

“Yes, Phillipa?”

“Don’t leave us because you’re sad,” she says softly.

The statement reopens the wound of Mal’s death in his heart. Arthur feels like his breath is knocked from his lungs and his eyes begin to tear up. He wasn’t here when Mal was falling apart. He was working too much but he knew, from the calls Cobb made to him a few times, that she stopped trying to hide her delusions from the kids.

“I’m not leaving, honey,” he says, voice cracking so much he resorts to whispering. “I know you’re real and that I’m not dreaming, okay? I just had something bad happen that I need some time to get better from? But I’m not going away. Do you understand that?”

She nods, tears welling in her big green eyes. They are so like her mothers. He reaches his hand out to her and she takes it lightly in her fingers. He rubs his thumb over her hand. He wishes Mal never lost herself or had tried to get help. He wishes that Phillipa and James never had to lose their mother.

“I know what it’s like to not trust someone that you care about,” he says.

The statement hits him like a kick to the chest. He just said out loud everything that he’s been thinking about constantly for the last year. The root of the problem, the entire reason why his world crashed down around him so hard, the reason he’s been fighting to deny this entire time. He just said it so plainly to Dom’s child.

Arthur swallows thickly before continuing, “But I want you to trust that I won’t leave because I’m sad. I’m trying to get help, okay? It’s not going to be like before.”

She nods again, her mouth trembling. He pulls her into a hug and she sniffles into his shoulder. He doesn’t try to fight the tears that fall down his own cheeks. He realizes how selfish he’s been. If he just lets everything overwhelm him again, if he lets his depression take over, he’ll be hurting his friends. He’ll be hurting the people who care for him. He’ll be hurting the children, and Dom, Ariadne and … no, not Eames. Eames feels guilty, but it’s not the same as truly caring.

Arthur knows that he has to get through this. He has to make an effort in therapy. He has to take control again. If he’s going to make it through, he has to fight for it. He can’t break Phillipa’s heart, not like her mother did. He can’t put her through that again. He can’t put Dom through losing someone again.

“Hey, hey. It’s going to be okay, Phillipa.” He pulls her back to look her in her eyes again. “Don’t cry, okay? I’m going to be all right.”

She wipes tears from her eyes with the back of her hand; they’re red and puffy. She looks somehow older this way. It seems so wrong because tears usually make children seem younger. But the sadness behind her eyes, the knowledge of what depression can lead to ages her. Again, Arthur wishes she didn’t know what it was like to lose someone. He wishes she didn’t know what it was like to watch someone fall apart.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, wiping the rest of his own tears away. He stands up and holds her hand as they enter the house.

He has two days until his next session. Next time he’ll make a real effort to talk about things. He still doesn’t know exactly how to fix anything, but he’ll try. He’ll try and get to the root of the problem. He’ll do whatever exercises the doctor desires. He’ll do all the immersion therapy and calm breathing, and talking she wants. It’s not just about him, and he knows this now. He has to try.


	15. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

Sitting in the parking lot of an L.A doctor’s clinic is exhausting. Eames alternates from turning the car on and blasting the air conditioner, to turning it off and letting the warm southern California breeze blow through the open windows of the car. The radio stations are shite and Eames doesn’t have the energy to select his own music to fit his mood. He sits quietly, listening to traffic go by. It’s an hour of his time, two days a week, that he spends waiting and thinking. It would be less painful, he thinks, if his mind was able to wander to more pleasant thoughts, but unfortunately they don’t. Every hour he sits here is filled with the knowledge of his mistake, rehashing every way in which he should have acted differently and trying to figure out what he can do now. Eames hasn’t come up with anything yet.

Arthur walks out the door, glass reflecting the sun’s bright glare into Eames’ eyes for one blinding second. He’s scowling, jaw set and eyes not focused indicating that Arthur is lost in thought. Eames instantly becomes wary, expecting a tense drive back to Cobb’s house. They don’t talk much anymore, can only come up with small amounts of chitchat about Phillipa or James most of the time. The days that are utterly devoid of conversation are the hardest because it’s as if they’re back in Paris again with Arthur silent and lost in his own thoughts, Eames wondering how to bring him back.

He could quit.

Eames could take off if he wanted. He’s personally carved out an image of himself that makes it so people think he’s selfish. He cultivates the perception that he is only looking out for himself. People assume that he’ll run at the first sign of trouble and never look back. They wouldn’t be wrong.

Eames could leave, and even Ariadne wouldn’t be surprised by it, though they have gotten to know each other better lately. But he told Arthur he wouldn’t leave.

Arthur trusted him, before. Arthur trusted him, and Eames let Arthur down. Somehow, though he doesn’t know of any way, he has to make it up to Arthur. Eames has to show Arthur that it wasn’t about the job, it wasn’t about not caring. It was just the wrong decision made in an extreme situation. 

That’s all well and good if they talked about anything more than Phillipa’s upcoming school year and James’ penchant for bringing insects to the dinner table.

The drive home is silent. A golden and rose sunset settles over the city’s hills as they coast down the highway. Arthur is staring out the window and Eames takes in his profile, the bent slope of his nose, the angle of his jaw highlighted by the evening sun. Arthur has been doing better. Eames wonders what went wrong today.

When they arrive at the house, Cobb is cleaning, grabbing toys from the floor and tossing them into a basket in the corner. He ignores them, calling after his children to clean their rooms. Ariadne arrives an hour later. She’s sans Wild and Cobb takes her bags to the guest room as Eames embraces her with a small smile. He’s glad to have her reassuring presence back. She’d been doing all she could to help Eames track Arthur down before they found him in Paris.

They talk about her trip for a minute while Eames watches over her shoulder as Arthur makes his way to the back door, stepping out onto the patio. “How is he?” Ariadne asks, turning her head away from Arthur’s retreating form to look up at Eames’ face.

“Better,” Eames says, but it sounds unconvincing even to himself.

“How are _you?_ ” she asks. Eames doesn’t say anything, just looks back out at Arthur who is sitting outside. She squeezes his arm, quirking her lips in a sad smile. They stand for a minute before Cobb returns.

Dinner is stilted, odd conversation halted by tiptoeing over sensitive subjects. Ariadne gives news of Wild, her recent jobs, and the weather in Paris. Arthur is subdued but the air around him has changed somehow. He seems electric, energy and sharpness, and something more like his old self. Eames spends the night trying to figure out what happened between the doctor’s visit and now, but comes up with nothing. He’s left at the end of the night, alone in his room with his thoughts.

Eames could leave. Even his loyalty has a limit and he still doesn’t know if his presence is helping or hurting Arthur’s recovery. He could leave but he made a promise. He’s a conman though, and his promises are worth salt and rocks the majority of the time.

As Eames stares up at the textured, plaster ceiling, streaked with street light from the paned-glass windows, he tries to figure out exactly what is holding him here in a country that is not his own, not even one he enjoys being in for extended periods of time. He could go back to Mombasa, gamble away his worries for a few months, maybe contact Yusuf. Or he could head to Thailand to get back to his roots, picking pockets, running rackets, to see if Denise is still alive and kicking.

Both of these ideas sound better than spending two days a week sitting outside a generic office, coming home to awkward conversation and dealing with children he barely knows. He and Dom are still at odds. Though Cobb is helping in this situation, Eames still can’t forgive him for nearly sending them all to limbo. Cobb seems unable to forgive Eames for Arthur’s mental state. Eames suspects that he deserves Cobb’s animosity as much as Cobb deserves his, so they’re at a tentative draw.

Ariadne is a small buffer between them. Somehow, she is more able to navigate the tension, to put aside her own anger to keep everyone from snapping. She’s even connecting with Arthur more, since he had never lost his faith in her like he has in Dom and Eames. But the process is slow, and day-by-day Eames finds that he and Arthur aren’t repairing their relationship. It’s disappointing, but he couldn’t expect that they would.

So why is he here? Why does he stay? Eames thinks about what it would mean, walking away. He would probably lose Ariadne for a while, she would be angry with him, stop speaking to him, and stop working with him. He could bring her around eventually. He would break all ties with Cobb, but that’s not something he considers a problem.

He would never be able to see Arthur again.

Eames’ chest constricts painfully at that thought and his hands grip the sheets reflexively. If he leaves, if he gives up, he will never be able to face Arthur again. The hope that Eames might someday see Arthur as he was before is what keeps Eames here. He’s taken for granted everything about Arthur, his sharp wit, his stoicism, his work ethic. Eames cares that Arthur can’t joke, or work, or even scowl condescendingly like he used to. Eames thought he found Arthur irritating, but he realizes now how entertaining banter with Arthur had been. Eames thinks about how he could always count on Arthur for a lively argument, and still know that they would successfully execute any plan they set out to, despite their fighting.

Eames had let their friendship slip through his fingers, coated in blood and splattered over a cold, cement block.

Eames wishes he could take it all back. He wishes he just explain how sorry he is. He wants Arthur to know how much Arthur means to him, how much he cares. He wants Arthur to know that he loves him, that he would never make that decision again.

He loves him.

Eames sits up abruptly, the sheet falling away from his bare chest, leaving him chilled in the air-conditioned room. Realization hits him hard. He scrabbles for the poker chip he keeps, snatching it from the nightstand and flipping it through his fingers. After a while, Eames bows his head into his palms, rubbing fitfully at his eyes and through his hair as he contemplates his last thought. He loves Arthur. He would do anything that Arthur needs, anything. But he doesn’t know what that is right now.

Eames is utterly fucked.


	16. The Consequences of Trust

“How are you feeling today, Arthur?” Dr. Steffe sits in her chair, clipboard in hand and legs crossed at the knee. She taps the top of her pen against her shoulder as she thinks.

“Better,” Arthur says. He brushes lint off of his charcoal gray slacks. Dr. Steffe sits forward, taking note of the tone of Arthur’s statement.

“What changed?” She asks as she starts taking notes.

Arthur looks out the window, to the parking lot where Eames is sitting, the sun’s heat beating down on the roof of the rental. He thinks about the way Phillipa seemed days ago, too old and too young with the way her face distorted in anguish as she cried for him. He never wanted to be the cause for that kind of sadness again. “I realized that I am the only person in the way of my recovery.”

Dr. Steffe smiles hopefully, nods in a way that makes it obvious she’s controlling her enthusiasm. “Okay then, let’s get started. I’d like to take you through the basic exercises still, and then hopefully we can get to the more difficult subjects later.”

Arthur tilts his chin in agreement. He starts to tap his toe anxiously, still isn’t quite sure if he can do this, but he is determined. Success is what he does. Today he dressed more like his former self, foregoing jeans or borrowed sweatpants in favor of his fitted slacks. He’s not wearing a tie but he’s in a button-down instead of a t-shirt and he feels better already, more in control; a far cry from where he has been, at least. Eames had given him an appraising look when he sat down for breakfast in the morning. Arthur caught him staring several times throughout the meal: quick glances up through his eyelashes, a thumb swiped over his lip in thought. Arthur doesn’t know what to make of it, though. Eames didn’t indicate pleasure or disapproval, simply interest in Arthur’s state of dress.

Arthur frowns, he can never quite read Eames, can never pick apart his emotions like Eames can his. He always feels at a disadvantage when in Eames’ presence, which may be why they grate on each other. Arthur doesn’t like the unknown, the unquantifiable. He likes to be able to break things down, figure them out, work through weak points and solidify his tactical position. He likes to think through every possible outcome, everything that could hurt him or his team.

Eames is his blind spot. 

They start with simple statements of facts, assessments of stress levels and a relaxation exercise. They’ve made their way through the dream, Arthur’s reaction and how he felt helpless after. They go over ways to cope with anxiety and real world stressors again. Then, after Arthur starts to lose patience repeating things they’ve been over many times, Dr. Steffe makes a loaded request.

“Tell me about Eames,” she says in the middle of Arthur’s breathing exercise. He coughs with surprise and his heart starts to beat faster instantly. Arthur glances over sharply and thinks about deflecting the question and moving on to something else, Cobb maybe, Mal’s death. 

Dr. Steffe looks at him unwaveringly. They stare at eachother for a moment before Arthur clears his throat and starts to think put together his answer. He came here to confront his problems and move on, so he sucks in air through his teeth and begins.

“I’m sure you are familiar with the idea of forgers?” Dr. Steffe nods that she does. Arthur continues, “Well, Eames is the best in the business. You ask for someone, he delivers.”

Dr. Steffe urges him on. “And on this particular job?”

Arthur grimaces. “He was perfect.” Arthur swallows and chews on his lip nervously. “We asked for a thug.”

“And he delivered?”

Arthur nods. The memories play in his mind, vivid but broken up. Little snippets of actions, of feelings, of emotion fight for attention in his mind as he tries to organize his thoughts. _Pain. Eames. Kohler. Blood. Fear. No._ He needs to control them, to put them in their place, organized and safe and ready to be pulled out when he needs them and only when he needs them.

“So what changed between you and him?”

Arthur fidgets. He pulls at the cuff of his sleeve, plays with the button. He glances out the window again before speaking. “There has to be a line, right? One that you don’t cross,” he says.

“Which line was that?”

Dr. Steffe stops writing notes. He looks directly at her when he answers. “Pain is in the mind. You don’t torture someone.”

Dr. Steffe cocks her head skeptically. “Have you ever tortured anyone?”

“Not someone I cared about,” Arthur mumbles as he looks away again. The hypocrisy of his statement is not something that he wants to delve into right now. Dr. Steffe continues her questions.

“Eames cared about you?”

“I … I don’t know.” Arthur brings a fingernail to his mouth and starts to chew, before catching himself and hooking his hand in his pocket to stop the nervous habit. He doesn’t want to think about Eames. 

“But you trusted him?” Dr. Steffe prods.

All these months that he spent holed up in his house because he couldn’t trust his own actions, fearful of other’s intentions, fearful of his own. He thinks of how everyone he could truly rely on has let him down. Cobb, Mal, Eames. Not Ariadne though, but Arthur would never rely on her, never trust his life to her; she’s too green. Anyone left who he might have trusted with his life are now called into question by the error of his judgment. If Cobb and Eames can betray him, than anyone can.

“What are you thinking, Arthur? I can’t help if you don’t tell me what you are thinking.” 

It’s not condescending the way she says it. Arthur is struck yet again by the way she can be so hard to hate while she still forces uncomfortable subjects.

“I trusted him, yes,” he answers quietly.

“Why is that?”

“He never let me down before. He never sold me out. He’s had opportunity, motive in the past. He never gave me a reason to doubt him.”

“And now?”

Arthur pauses again, to collects his thoughts, palming the red die in his pocket before he answers. “I doubt everyone. I doubt myself.”

“Why do you doubt yourself?”

Arthur’s grip on the die tightens and he can feel the blunted edges of it dig into his palm. He leans forward, his shoulders sagging as he stares at the laces of his shoes. He’s not even angry when he thinks about it, just defeated. “How could I have been so stupid to trust anyone?” He whispers.

Dr. Steffe reaches out a hand to lie on his shoulder lightly. Not a hint of judgment or superiority graces her voice when she says softly, “We all have to trust in others, Arthur. We have to have a little faith.”

“Well I don’t.”

“You wouldn’t be here if that were true.”

Arthur jerks his shoulder away, glaring daggers towards her as he hisses, “I almost wasn’t! Eames just happened to show up in time.”

“Just happened to show up?”

Arthur snaps his mouth shut, argument caught in his throat. He remembers Eames taking him to the park in a dream. He remembers what Eames had said. _I should have never let you think I didn’t care._

Everything about that statement tears at Arthur’s mind. It’s like a sliver caught under his skin, irritating, unignorable as it sticks there deep enough that he can’t pull it out. It doesn’t make sense. Eames ignored him during the Colombia job. He was so cold, so distant, as if nothing had happened.

_I should never have let you..._

“I think that’s enough for today,” Dr. Steffe says, closing her notebook. She looks worried. Arthur realizes his fingers are white with the blood pushed from his skin because he’s digging his fingernails into the upholstery of the chair. Flexing them, he releases his grip, letting the blood circulate back in. He closes his eyes and starts another breathing cycle to calm himself down.

“Do we need to call you another ride? I’m not sure I feel comfortable with Eames driving you home today.”

“No,” he says after a while. His heart is still racing, but he can feel it start to slow. “No, I’ll be fine.”

Arthur scribbles his signature on the sign-out sheet with a huff. The receptionist frowns sympathetically and Arthur grits his teeth against a scathing remark about her minding her own business even though she hasn’t said anything at all to him today. Dr. Steffe steps out of her office before he’s about to turn to leave.

“Arthur, I really think we should call you another ride today,” she says. “I can try Cobb.”

“No.” 

Arthur doesn’t wait for her to offer again. He shoves through the door into the afternoon air. It’s summer in LA and the week has been particularly warm. He tugs the car door open and collapses into the seat. Eames gives him a wary glance but starts the engine without comment. The air conditioner comes on but it does little to make Arthur feel less itchy and uncomfortable in his clothes.

When they get back to Cobb’s house, Arthur locks himself in his room and sits on the edge of his bed. He skips dinner, which he knows he’ll hear about from Cobb and Ariadne later, but he doesn’t care. All he wants it to be left alone, to curl up on the sheets and shut the world out. All he can think about is what he said to Phillipa.

Arthur thinks about how he can feel Eames’ presence in the house. Any corner he turns and Eames may be there, sitting on the couch reading a book, in the kitchen making tea, on the patio, in the hall, anywhere. The thought of it makes Arthur’s stomach hurt and his shoulders tense. It’s too much to deal with. It too hard to parse what he feels for Eames, what he feels for anything anymore when he’s always on the defensive.

Arthur rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. The evening light casts stripes from the blinds across the speckled plaster. He wants to get better. He wants his life back. He thinks about how he can gain some leverage, can make progress. He thinks into the night, until the moon is high and everyone else in the house has gone to bed. Every successful scenario he can imagine for recovery starts with one thing.

After breakfast, when Cobb is driving the kids to school and Ariadne is off drawing or something, Arthur corners Eames in the kitchen. He steels himself, squaring his shoulders, which he knows is not as intimidating or strong a gesture as it has been in the past, and asks Eames to leave.


	17. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

Eames’ chest feels as if it has been kicked in, like he can’t breathe, can’t focus on anything but the spreading ache behind his ribs. He’s looking at Arthur who seems so sure, face hard with a confidence Eames hasn’t encountered from him in over a year. Eames can see that the set of his shoulders is squared off, back straight to imply power and control. But this person before him is like a hologram of the old Arthur, blurred around the edges, not quite reality. The old Arthur wouldn’t have the flicker of uncertainty, the unsteady hands twitching at his sides.

Eames would feel relief over the fact that Arthur is finally taking more control and making a difficult decision, except for the fact that the decision hurts like a sucker-punch. 

There was hope before this. Eames felt it like a strand of hair caught in his fingers, invisible and slipping away before he could properly grasp it, to keep hold and wrap it around his knuckles tightly. Arthur this morning, stepping into the kitchen from the hall in a pressed white shirt that was already folded up at the elbows, had made Eames’ heart skip and then beat faster. He wanted to mention the fact that Arthur was wearing his fitted slacks again. He wanted to say anything about the sudden change in Arthur’s appearance, but he couldn’t for fear of pushing Arthur away. If Arthur reacted poorly to approval, would he regress? And if he reacted well, would that give Eames too much hope?

Eames knows that he can never have Arthur. He might have been able to, once, if Arthur was interested, if Eames ever allowed himself to know the truth of his own feelings without the catalyst of this tragedy. But not now, never. If Arthur had any of the same feelings before he certainly doesn’t anymore. Eames can think of no way to redeem himself. What he did was unforgivable. He bites his tongue and allows himself the briefest assessment of Arthur’s clothing, lets the happiness of seeing the tiniest inkling of normality from Arthur wash over him as he chews on his fingernail to keep from speaking. Progress is progress, and whether it’s beneficial to Eames’ relationship with Arthur is not important.

The drive to the office is quiet, the droning hum of the motor and the airy whoosh of passing traffic is the only soundtrack to their journey. The ride to Arthur’s appointment is not uncomfortable for once, and Eames fights the urge to break the amicable silence by drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He pulls the car into the lot and throws the gearshift into park. 

It still feels strange to him driving Arthur around. Everything feels off kilter since Colombia, as if the world has shifted it’s axis. Arthur had always been a rock, a anchor in the climatic whirlpool that is the business of illegal dreamshare. Eames hadn’t realized how much he had relied on Arthur until Arthur wasn’t there, until Arthur was set adrift, waiting to be tossed over the edge of a fall.

Arthur opens the door and unfolds himself from the car. His spine is straighter as he crosses the few meters to the door and that tickle of hope crawls over Eames’ skin again. _An hour,_ he thinks, _another hour._ Turning the radio on to a Mexican music station with the volume set low, Eames listens to the trumpets and guitars play as the sun burns through the windows.

Arthur bursts through the door forty minutes later. He’s seething; Eames can see from here. His posture is rigid: jaw clenched and shoulders heaving as he breathes. Arthur’s body is like a wound rubber band that is ready to snap. He tugs open the door gracelessly, pulling it shut with force after his body drops into the front seat. Eames turns his eyes forward and starts the car without a word. He doesn’t look at Arthur the entire ride home, though he wants to. He wants to dissect every twitch of Arthur’s cheek, every line of Arthur’s furrowed brow. He wants to sooth them away with his fingers, wondering what could have set Arthur off after such a good morning. Eames wants to shoot the doctor. He would tear her heart out through her throat if he could, though he certainly knows that anger is misdirected.

Arthur doesn’t eat dinner with the rest of them. Ariadne is dismayed, not just because of her pride in successfully helping with a dinner that doesn’t come from a box, but because she is worried. She keeps looking to the hall as she spoons chicken casserole and asparagus onto her plate. They are all worried and the furtive glances shared around the table don’t help to lighten the mood. The children seem to pick up on the tension, eating quietly before excusing themselves to go play. Eames wishes he could escape like them, able to forget over a game of hide and seek or a tea party. Instead he pushes his food along his plate until he can’t sit at the table any longer.

Eames walks past Arthur’s room towards his own, stopping to listen outside the door. He can’t hear anything and there is no light coming from the crack at the bottom. Moving past it dejectedly, he makes his way to his room. Cobb’s house is massive, too large for a single family. It’s beautiful, but haunting. There’s too much of Mal left here. Eames didn’t know her well, but it’s clear where her presence remains. He wonders what it must be like living with the ghosts Cobb has. He wonders if it’s also difficult for Arthur being here. Eames didn’t know just how close Arthur was with Mal, not until that moment with Cobb when Arthur broke down in the hotel in Paris.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Eames removes his shoes, socks, and pants. He undresses slowly and methodically, shedding each layer like he’s shedding a skin. It’s usually one of his favorite moments of the day, removing his identity—especially if that identity is not his own. But the act seems hollow tonight. He can’t rid himself of the worry, the ache in his gut like cement hardened inside, and it makes him restless, keeps him tossing and turning all night.

The morning is when it happens. Cobb is taking the kids to school, Ariadne isn’t around and Arthur is forcing confidence as he delivers a request that hurts like hell. And Eames wishes he was wearing another face, another person, that it wasn’t his emotions being wrenched to the surface. He wishes that he were dreaming because Arthur is pushing him away and Eames knows that this is the last time he will ever see Arthur again.

“Eames, I need you to leave. I can’t … concentrate, on recovering when you’re here.” 

Arthur doesn’t outright say it, but Eames can read it all over him. Eames makes Arthur uncomfortable. Arthur is _afraid_ of him. That fact hurts more than anything else.

Arthur’s posture shifts. He looks uncertain, maybe worried that Eames won’t listen, that he has no power to ask him to go. Eames can’t allow that. He wants Arthur to know that anything that Arthur needs, Eames will give him. He nods and stops Arthur, stops him before he can lose his resolve.

“Of course, Arthur, of course,” he whispers urgently. Arthur’s brow furrows in confusion, as if he expected Eames to fight him on this. They look at each other for a long moment, silence hanging in the air like a suffocating blanket. Eames looks down at his feet and nods before leaving the room, not wanting to drag this out any longer.

The hallway is a long foreboding tunnel as he heads to his room. It feels as if he’s walking down death row. Maybe that’s an over-dramatic comparison but it does feel like he’s heading towards an end. Eames packs his bag quickly, shoving clothing into it carelessly and probably forgetting things he’s left around the house. Before he leaves, he searches for Ariadne but doesn’t find her in the house. He can’t take off if nobody else is here. Arthur’s made progress, but leaving him alone is out of the question. Eames anxiously waits in the sitting room with his suitcase by the door.

It doesn’t take long for Cobb and Ariadne to return, clamoring in the door with grocery bags, discussing something about structural integrity and some other architectural argument Eames only half catches. 

Cobb sees the suitcase and stops mid-sentence to ask, “What’s going on?”

“I have to leave,” Eames says matter of fact as he stands.

Ariadne gapes at him. “Leave?” she asks incredulously. “But I thought you said you wouldn’t.” 

Eames shoots her a sharp look and clears his throat. “Yes, I know. Arthur has asked me to leave.”

Ariadne’s face falls and she swallows whatever she was about to say next. Cobb frowns as well. “I’ll have to get Ariadne a car,” he says after a moment, practical in his assessment. “She’ll need to take Arthur to his appointments.”

Eames nods. He hadn’t thought about that, shamefully too wrapped up in himself, and Ariadne looks worriedly between the two of them. They stand there until Ariadne breaks the silence. “Where are you going to go? You know, in case something comes up.”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll text you, I promise.” Eames sighs and then grabs the handle of his bag. His fingers clench and unclench as he tries to think of anything more he needs to say. Ariadne steps forward and wraps her fingers over his forearm. Her eyes are full of sympathy, which makes Eames feel worse. He pulls her into a hug and presses a kiss to her hair. “I promise I won’t drop off the face of the earth,” he assures her.

“Better not” she says, squeezing his ribs. “I’ll take care of him. I’ll call you every day with an update, if you want.”

“No. It’s better, it’s better if you don’t.” Ariadne lets him go, crossing her arms to hug her own body. Eames shakes Cobb’s hand. They don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. Eames nods before turning and wheeling his bag out the door behind him. He throws it into the trunk of the rental and collapses into the front seat.

The drive to LAX is long but traffic is fairly light in the middle of a weekday. Eames doesn’t bother turning the radio on, instead he lets the sounds of a few passing cars and the rumble of the tires over asphalt act as his soundtrack for the drive. He hasn’t booked a flight out yet, doesn’t know where he’s going, in fact. He’ll figure that out when he turns the car in. Eames will have to make sure to use one of his squeaky clean ID’s booking a flight the day of.

After turning the rental into a bored but friendly attendant, Eames takes a shuttle to the international terminal. He’s standing in the lobby, the high ceilings making all sounds echo loudly around him as fellow travelers move about like ants, forming orderly lines at the ticket counters. The screens of flights don’t focus as he stares at them. 

Eames feels completely lost. Usually he as a destination for any occasion, a place he can lay low if he’s on the run. But none of them feel appropriate. He isn’t on the run; he’s not escaping or having to hide out. He’s simply being discarded and he doesn’t have a suitable accommodation for the _person I love just told me to get out of his life_ type of travel.

When he finally shakes himself out of his stupor, Eames’ gaze settles on a destination. He chews on his lower lip before deciding if that is really the place that is best for him right now. Approaching the counter, Eames purchases a one-way ticket to London.

*** “Hullo, mum,” Eames gasps; his wind is nearly knocked out as his mother flings herself into him for a tight hug. Her hair smells of lavender and cigarettes and _home_.

“Darling, what are you doing here?” She asks as she pulls back to study him, her hands gripping just above each of his elbows as they stand on the small set of stairs to her leading to her door. She pulls him in for another hug, then runs her hands down the lapels of his blazer and pulls at the buttons of his shirt.

“Don’t fuss,” he admonishes without malice. She smiles. There are more wrinkles around her eyes and mouth than he remembers, more gray on her head, but otherwise she looks the same. Her hair is pulled back as always, and her cardigan is rolled up at the elbows, gold bangles clinking together on her wrists. She looks down at his bag and her mouth flattens into a knowing frown.

“Oh, darling, come tell me everything,” she says as she drags him inside. He sets his bag next to the couch before taking a seat. It’s the same sofa she’s had for the last fifteen years: an ugly abstract pattern in equally ugly colors, worn on one side more than the other where she sits. Her wallpaper is peeling in the corners and there’s trashy tabloids scattered on the coffee table. Eames stacks them on a corner as his mother bustles off to put the kettle on, not bothering to ask if he actually wants any tea.

He doesn’t tell her about Arthur. It’s enough that she’s willing to distract him as he tries not to think about it. The tea is deliciously hot. It’s also a tad too sweet but it comforts him as his mother sits and catches him up with all that he’s missed from the family since his last visit years ago. After running out of things to tell him about the various family members, she finally drops the cheeriness and pats his leg to get his attention. 

“You all right, dear?”

“I did something awful, mum,” he replies, staring at the muted telly. She takes his hand in her own, squeezing it with a little shake.

“Anything I can help with?” she asks. He looks at her sadly. She wants so badly to help him and he can’t tell her what he did. She barely knows what his work even is, the idea of dreamshare never resolving into something she can quite understand.

“No,” he says solemnly. “No this is something I’m going to have to live with.”

*** Eames texts Ariadne to let her know where he ended up, and ignores her texts back. The rain starts a few days after he arrives and it seems fitting, the weather matching his mood. It feels hollow here, like he’s moving through a fog and everything is disconnected. He keeps thinking of Arthur, wondering how his therapy is going, if Ariadne sits outside the office in case his appointment ends early. Every once in awhile he’ll see a flash of dark hair, the right size build and a nice suit as he walks along the street; his heart skips a beat. But then the random man will turn around and it won’t be Arthur, just a bloke heading to work. Eames’ face will fall and the rest of his day will be utterly ruined.

Eames tries to indulge his mum with dinners out while taking up residence in the guest room. It’s not his childhood home but she has been there long enough for it to be familiar. It helps a little, taking her to places she’s wanted to try, letting her happiness overshadow his depression. After a few weeks he feels up to hitting the pub with the few friends he still keeps contact with. Their lives are uncomplicated and domestic: wives, children, desk jobs or small businesses. At one point Eames would have dismissed it all as boring, lacking in every way, but he feels a distinct jealousy towards them and the choices they have never and will never have to make.

At night, though, he replays the Weiss job over an over, acting out different scenarios, ones where he makes the right decision and kills Arthur quickly, and others where he hurts him more. Eames has never gone under frequently enough to lose his natural dreams permanently. He only loses them during jobs and he ponders getting his hands on a PASIV just to rid himself of them for a while. Each one wakes him in a cold sweat and the urge to phone Ariadne to find out how Arthur is doing. But involving himself in Arthur’s progress will do nothing to sever himself from Arthur and that’s what Arthur needs. That’s what Eames needs.

Eames breaks down one day, calculating the time difference to catch her on an afternoon that Arthur will be at his appointment. “How is he?” he asks when she picks up. She doesn’t miss a beat or get angry at him for getting to the point.

“Good,” she says. “Some days are better than others, but I think he might be doing better.” 

It’s good news, should be great news if Arthur is making progress, but it wrenches Eames’ heart just the same. Arthur is recovering because Eames isn’t there. He was a problem and he was holding Arthur back. Any remaining hope that Eames had of having contact with Arthur again dies like a candle being snuffed out. 

“Eames?” Ariadne asks when he hasn’t said anything for a while.

“Thanks,” he says his voice tight, swallowing thickly to clear the lump that’s lodged itself in his throat. “That’s great news. Hey, I’m going to start taking jobs again, I think. I need something to focus on. I’ll let you know where I end up, yeah?”

“Okay, sure,” she says hesitantly. “You sure you are doing all right, Eames?” Her voice needles it’s way into his heart, making the ache worse.

“I’ll be fine,” he says.

***

Eames knows he has to leave London when his moping starts to get to his mother. She would never ask him to go but he can tell she’s getting frazzled by not being able to help, fluttering around him, doting but unwilling to force him to open up to her. He doesn't want to burden her with his morose demeanor. She’s had a hard life, raising him and his sister on her own, working three jobs until they were old enough to help out (whatever less than reputable ways that might have been in Eames’ case). She deserves to be happy, to be out with her friends and not worrying about her son’s unsolvable problems.

He rings up a few contacts, looking for work. There are no jobs big enough to use a forger, but there are a few that call for a thief and he can always step in as an extractor if needed. The first job he snags is a few weeks worth of work out of Madrid. It’s tedious and it keeps him busy. The next job he takes is in Sicily, then after that Bucharest, Haifa and Alexandria.

Eames decidedly does not think about the fact that he’s working his way mathematically to the farthest point on the planet he can get from Los Angeles without being on a boat in the Indian Ocean. He’s actually considering a job in Mumbai a few months out but it’s far below his skill level and half the team is brand new into dreaming. He hasn’t worked the other half before either.

It should concern Eames that he’s not taking jobs based on the best offers or the biggest challenges. It should also concern him that he’s doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t. Ariadne has tried to contact him several times over the last two months and he’s ignored her completely. He stopped bothering to tell her where he was planning to travel after he left Spain. He doesn’t want to think about anything having to do with Arthur right now.

It seems like it is all he can think about though, especially when he’s alone at night, head pillowed on another hotel room pillow and the lights of the city reflecting off of ceiling. He had vowed not to leave Arthur and that had been the wrong decision. Every decision he has made in regard to Arthur has been a mistake. Every night he asks himself how he could have fucked up so badly.

Eames takes the job in Mumbai and barely makes it out alive. The entire team is in over their heads and he knows it the moment he arrives. But instead of turning around and flying himself straight back out of the country, Eames decides to stick around and see if he can salvage the job. Nobody dies, thankfully, but it is a close call. The adrenaline boost of the escape makes Eames feel better than he has since Colombia. The high of almost dying is intoxicating, flushing out any thoughts of Arthur as he fights to survive. It’s short lived, however, when he has to lie low to for a week in India’s sweltering heat. The next job Eames picks up is just as dangerous, albeit with a more skilled and experienced team. It’s difficult but not as thrilling and Eames finds that he goes right back to thinking about Arthur when he’s not out tailing his prospective forge.

It gets to him, the inability to block Arthur out, so the next job he chooses next is another rough and unscrupulous gig with rough and unscrupulous people. Their client tries to sell them out (Eames still doesn’t know how that is supposed to work in the client’s favor) and he ends up with a broken finger, a cracked rib, and too many bruises to count.

It feels good.

Each job that Eames takes gets progressively more dangerous. They’re below his pay grade, below his standards, below his sense of safety. But concentrating on staying alive in the shittiest situations means that Eames isn’t thinking about anything other than saving his own neck.

This is how he winds up in the control of the Albanian Mafia. Control is a pretty accurate word for it. Eames is bound, wrists tied expertly and legs secured on a rolling chair. He’s blindfolded and being wheeled through some sort of hallway, as far as he can tell from the width to each wall as he tries to see out the gaps at the bottom of the fabric. The lights are bright, the walls freshly painted and the floor clean. Eames has to assume it’s a permanent location, somewhere worthy of maintenance. This might work in his favor, as he is less likely to be murdered here, so there’s a little hope.

Eames has to hand it to his captors for thinking ahead, not having to carry him or force him to walk on his swollen, sprained ankle. They don’t want to be slowed down getting him to the destination.Clearly they are used to keeping hostages, or prisoners, or witnesses that need coercing. They’re probably moving him for another round of questions, which leaves Eames feeling anxious.

These men don’t draw the sessions out. No, they get straight to the point, short and sharp with their methods. Nothing too injurious to render him incoherent, but it is still bloody painful. His ankle was an accident from being captured, but the deep black series of bruises along his inner thighs are very purposeful. They’ll probably move up and in next, nothing quite beats threatening a man’s bollocks to get him to open up. Eames might be able to hold out until they get to his fingers. He needs those to survive.

The only problem with interrogation is that he doesn’t have much to give him. If he were part of his normal type of team for this extraction he would have information. But Eames didn’t vet this job, didn’t make a backup plan, didn’t get to know his team, barely knows who the client is (and will be unable to offer a reverse extraction), and has no other valuable information that they may want. He’s tried to think of ways to keep himself alive, but his lies are running out.

The wheels of his chair catch on the metal threshold of a doorway and Eames is nearly thrown on his face. He’s a little surprised that they catch him. Normally that tactic can be used to put the subject ill at ease, the inability to catch themselves, the utter sense of helplessness jarring them just enough to start panic before leading them with questions. The knot of discomfort in his stomach tightens.

“Ah, Mr. Eames,” a voice greets in heavily accented English. Eames’ blood goes cold. He didn’t tell them a name, any name. The only name they could have gotten from him was _Kensey Williams_ off of his false identity.

“So nice of you to join us. You have a visitor here. You are a lucky man, Mr. Eames. Somebody thinks you are far more valuable than we do.” Mind racing, Eames works through a list of enemies that could have tracked him. He doesn’t think anyone has connections with the Albanian Mafia, at least not that he can remember. There are a couple that would pay off an organized crime group for the opportunity to kill him themselves, though.

“He is all yours, Mr. Weiss. Do you wish my men to take him to your car?” 

Eames very nearly rips his wrists open when he panics, struggling against the ropes violently. He doesn’t hear an answer to the question, blacking out when something very hard hits him on the back of the head.


	18. The Consequences of Trust

Arthur taps away on his keyboard. It feels good to be functioning again. His mind is still fuzzy though, like there’s a barrier keeping him from making any significant progress on work.

It’s as if can see his goals but can’t concentrate hard or long enough to get there, a glass wall between him and success. When he finds that he can finally break through it, it still takes double the time it used to completing his task. Still, he’s managed to tap back into his usual communication lines and is caught up on any significant news since his disappearance from dreamshare.

It seems his absence has been highly speculated upon, but with a few calls and assurances that he’s alive and a few white lies about taking a break for family issues, he’s managed to squelch most of the harmful rumors.

Arthur is not ready to take jobs again though, that is clear. He still has nightmares, but is more capable with dealing with them now. That’s not the problem. The trust issues are what’s holding him back. Even with Ariadne’s help he’s only managed to work up the nerve to use the PASIV once. That was when Cobb was visiting Miles in Paris with the kids and was guaranteed not to return while they were under. He nearly backed out of session as well.

Ariadne had never done anything to harm him, ever. He had no reason to possibly distrust her. On the Fischer job, she had told him outright that Cobb had issues, but he hadn’t realized that her acute observation was accurate in time to stop Cobb from nearly sacrificing them all to Limbo. Even so, allowing himself to become vulnerable to her, to be helplessly anesthetized, to allow her into his mind _terrified_ him.

It took half an hour for Arthur to finally insert the needle into his arm. Ariadne sat patiently on the floor, fingers tracing the pattern of the carpet as he remained on the bed practicing his breathing exercises. He only agreed to this test under the condition that he was allowed complete control of the PASIV. Arthur set the Somnacin doses himself, set the timer, and was in control of the depressor.

Ariadne had inserted her needle before him and was probably a little annoyed for having to sit with it jammed into her arm while he gathered himself mentally. But that was the agreement; she was waiting and Arthur didn’t want to back out. He needed to see if he could do this again.

The dream was surprisingly placid when he was finally able to slip under. Arthur didn’t know what his subconscious would be like, what he might see in there. The idea of encountering Eames or Weiss, or accidentally winding up back in that warehouse caused panic to flood through his veins. But when they arrived, they found themselves in a small, brightly lit and colorfully decorated flat. It was warm, the sun shining through the bay windows with orange and cream striped drapes fluttering in a light breeze. There were drawings on the wall: portraits and blueprints with a few full renderings of classic Parisian buildings. The throw pillows were bright and soft as Arthur ran his fingers over them. The entire room smelled like vanilla.

“Is this your apartment?” Arthur asked as he paced the room, looking at a closet full of jackets and blouses and a wall rack draped with scarves and a few hats. The photos were all fuzzy or blurred so he couldn’t make out any people, but the ones of scenery were perfectly rendered.

He looked over a box with a few pieces of simple jewelry in it. He’d never seen Ariadne wear more than a watch and some earrings. He turned to look at Ariadne as she sat on the bed, the sun behind her making her red scarf glow around the edges and her hair shine a lighter brown.

“I thought we’d try someplace small and safe,” Ariadne said.

“You aren’t supposed to create from memory,” he reminded her, hearing Cobb’s voice echo in his head. This wasn’t the plan but Arthur wasn’t angry with her. They had planned for the hotel that Ariadne had created during the Fischer job. He found he liked this better.

“It’s not exactly the same as my real place,” she replied. “And I’m not going to get lost here.”

Arthur nodded, unable to argue. Ariadne was capable of making her own choices.

“I like it,” he said. His fingers traced over the wood of her antique dresser. It was in dire need of a sanding and a stain, obviously inexpensive due to it’s disrepair, but the structure was lovely.

“How does it feel?” Ariadne asked as she leaned back on her elbows, kicking her feet as they dangled over the bed.

“It feels … fine.” It was the truth. He felt fine. The dream was stable. Arthur felt just as he always had when walking through someone’s subconscious.

“Do you want to try to walk to a park?”

He and Ariadne had planned that if things went well entering the dream, they would try to walk outside with projections. If they had time, that was. If Arthur felt up to it. Now that he was thinking about it, it made so much more sense to bring him here. He was (they both knew) very familiar with Paris. It was one of the places in the world where he felt more at home. Any other city’s streets might have felt too imposing.

“Yeah,” he replied, nodding. “Let’s try.”

They made it about a block before the projections became restless. Arthur shot Ariadne in the back of the head, which he was not proud of, watching her body collapse in a bloody pool on the pavement. He’d be damned if he let anyone get hurt unnecessarily in a dream ever again though. He then shot himself, waking with a jerk, lungs heaving and Ariadne at his side to calm him down.

***

Closing down his laptop, Arthur goes to ready himself for his appointment. Ariadne is reading on the patio when he searches her out.

“Is it three already?” she asks as she marks her page. Arthur smiles at her. The California sun hasn’t managed to turn her pale skin anything more than a bright pink since she’s been here, so she sits under the shade of an umbrella. She slides her feet into some flip-flops and pulls her hair back into an untidy ponytail.

“All right, let’s go. I’m going grocery shopping during your appointment, so call me if you get out early.” Arthur nods and she follows him into the house, grabbing the keys as they head to the car.

Dr. Steffe’s office seems almost like a home now that’s he’s been coming here for months. He moves to the corner of chairs, sitting easily and comfortably with Dr. Steffe as she gathers her notes. “How was your weekend, Arthur?” she asks.

“It was good. I took your advice. We took the kids to La Brea Tar Pits.”

“Good. How was that? How did you do with the crowd?” Dr. Steffe writes a few notes down, though they’ve become less frequent as of late.

“A bit overwhelming.” Arthur admits. His smile is tight and deprecating. “But I managed. James and Phillipa were very distracting.”

He relays a few more details he knows Dr. Steffe would be interested in: how he handled confrontation, physical interaction, being without a weapon. Arthur has had a few exercises under his belt already with the farmer’s market and the laundromat, but nothing nearly as busy and exposed as the museum.

“You’re doing wonderfully, Arthur. Congratulations,” Dr. Steffe says.

Arthur smiles thinly.

***

It takes Arthur by surprise when Eames pops up in his feed. He’s mainly tapped into dreamshare gossip channels, still playing damage control. Arthur isn’t even sure salvaging his reputation is worth the effort, but if he does ever decide to get back into the game, he’ll need it intact.

There are posts from Gooseman and Brennen bragging about their team barely making it out alive in Singapore. Arthur sneers at the idea of bragging about almost failing, but some people love to show that they live dangerously. He’s stunned to see Eames’ name in the team line up. Eames doesn’t work with hacks and these two are a couple of the worst in the business. He’s suddenly filled with relief that they made it out, even if by the skin of their teeth. He could care less if Gooseman and Brennen get themselves killed, but what the fuck was Eames doing with them?

Arthur searches for Eames and comes up with a few more jobs that he knows Eames would normally never take. A worrying itchy feeling creeps into the back of his brain but Arthur tries not to read into it. It’s not his business. He sets up an alert for when Eames’ name shows up on his network anyway.

***

“I know, I miss you too. No. I don’t know.”

Arthur follows the quiet murmur of Ariadne’s voice to Cobb’s small library. It’s one of Arthur’s favorite rooms. Mal and Cobb had built up a nice collection of psychology, architecture, and fantasy books. They had every genre of fiction to pull ideas from for dreams and years of research into the human mind to know how to manipulate it. Cobb and Mal were researchers through and through. They always pushed themselves to the next level, to unlock the next door for the exploration of dreams. It’s sad what path that curiosities lead to, because they could have easily taken another and have been stupendously successful. Mal could still be alive.

Arthur tamps down on the emotions that threaten to overtake him with a shuddering swallow. He knows can’t handle that right now. He hasn’t dealt with Mal properly. Probably the only person who had dealt with it worse is Cobb.

“It really depends, it could be months.”

He’s listening just outside the door to one side of Ariadne’s conversation. There are pauses between each of her sentences when she’s listening.

“No, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come here. I want to see you but I’m not sure that’s good for Arthur.”

Arthur goes very still, afraid that any movement will alert Ariadne to his presence now that he is actually eavesdropping. His heart is jumping in his chest as he warily waits for what Ariadne will say.

“No, of course you can. I can meet you somewhere when Cobb is home from work. You’re right. I know. It’s hard for me too.”

It has to be Wild she’s speaking to. Arthur remembers him from Colombia. Not a bad extractor, judging from his reputation. Arthur wasn’t exactly paying that much attention to him then. He does remember thinking that he should have done a background check.

Ariadne finishes her phone call and Arthur starts to walk away when she calls out, “Arthur, I know you’re out there.”

He freezes mid-step embarrassed by his lack of stealth but impressed at Ariadne’s observational skills. He keeps forgetting that she’s not helpless, that she’s learned so much in such a short time. Opening the door, he lets himself in to the library to see Ariadne sitting curled up in Dom’s leather desk chair, which is far too big for her. She looks so young except for the tired expression on her face.

Before he thinks better of it, Arthur blurts out the last thing that was on his mind. “How well do you really know Wild?” he asks. He looks away when Ariadne’s eyes narrow skeptically.

“I know him fine. We trust each other,” she says a little bitterly. “And I know what you are getting at, Arthur. I had Eames do a background check on him after our first date. So don’t go all white knight on me to get back into your groove. There are better ways to use your time.”

Arthur winces. For one, he knows Ariadne is right. Two, the fact that Eames’ already did a check on Wild makes Arthur feel better. He doesn’t know why.

Ariadne must misinterpret the look though, because she her voice hardens and she crosses her arms over her chest sternly. “I trust Eames, even if you don’t.”

That spider crawl of doubt creeps over Arthur’s neck, right at the base of his skull. He does trust Eames’ judgment. Eames loves Ariadne. He would never let anyone near her with a violent history. Hell, he’d probably not let anyone near her with anything similar to Eames’ own sordid history, which Eames isn’t a good man but he’s not a bad man either. And that thought conflicts so heavily with Arthur’s view of Eames now that he can’t balance it. It’s as if Eames is two different people in his mind, and he doesn’t know which one is real. He wants the old Eames, the Eames he knew—the Eames who apologized, who tried to help, who left because he was asked to—to be the real Eames, not the monster who haunts his dreams at night.

His rational mind knows that Eames he doesn’t trust only exists, _only existed_ in dreams.

Arthur nods solemnly and turns to leave. His shoulders feel heavy with guilt and he’s not sure why. Ariadne doesn’t try to stop him. He sits in his room for the rest of the day, sifting through Eames’ recent jobs and if there are any more rumors he can uncover.

***

“How can I know that something isn’t real, and yet it feels real?” Arthur asks. 

He’s angry. His foot jumps off the floor in a nervous bounce and his elbows dig into his thighs as he leans forward. “I mean, I know that dreams feel real when you are in them. I have rationalized time and time again the events that happen in the mind, but why can’t I work this out? Why am I still afraid?”

“Arthur, you know that the subconscious can affect you, that things linger. Dreams are not a complete fantasy. There are always allusions to reality, things taken directly from from the real world. People don’t change so drastically in dreams that you can’t recognize them.”

Arthur nods, but Dr. Steffe’s statement doesn’t make him feel better. Yes, dreams reflect reality. But the events aren’t real. he knows that and he’s a professional. He shouldn’t be letting what happened on a job, what didn’t actually happen—would never happen—in real life affect him like this. He just wants to be better immediately.

“You also know that fantastical events can happen in dreams. That people can and will do things they would never in real life. We’ve circled this problem in our sessions time and time again. Have you thought, perhaps, that your fear is due to not trusting Eames in the first place?”

Arthur glowers, gritting his teeth together in frustration. “I trusted Eames with my life, before. I _knew_ Eames.”

“You say that, but I wonder if it’s something else. You trusted him with your life, but did you trust him with more?”

Arthur looks up sharply. “Like what more? What more could I trust him with?”

Dr. Steffe sighs, setting her notebook down as she continues hesitantly. “I don’t want to put ideas into your mind. But for you, someone who gambles with their life and sanity on a regular basis... In your line of work, I don’t think that your life is what you truly value.”

Arthur sits silently, smoldering the burning coals of fury and fear her observation stirs up. They only have a few minutes left in their session but Arthur doesn’t want to talk anymore. He stares out the blinds to the parking lot where no car is waiting for him. Ariadne said she’d be fifteen minutes late picking him up.

He waits in the air-conditioned lobby, quietly ignoring the other patients and the receptionist. When the rental car pulls in he stands. The ride back to Dom’s is silent for conversation but Ariadne has the radio along and is tapping her fingers on the steering wheel lightly.

Arthur locks himself in his room before dinner and again after. He lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting until it’s early morning to make his call.

It takes thirty minutes to find Yusuf’s current number, which has Arthur cursing under his breath in frustration. Yusuf’s location has more stable since he sells to a number of clients that need a steady supply. It shouldn’t take Arthur this long to find it. Irritated at himself, he punches the numbers into his cell phone and listens to it ring. The voice message system ticks over with the generic, slightly robotic prerecorded voice that lists off instructions to leave a message.

“Yusuf, this is Arthur. This is my number.” Arthur hangs up, setting the phone on the bedside table as he opens his browser and scans over the forums on any new word about Eames.

His phone rings two hours later, just before Dom and the kids will be getting up for breakfast. The sun has risen and streams into the room, reflecting off the dust on his monitor, making the screen difficult to see. Though he’s not expecting a call from anyone else, he still checks the caller I.D. before picking up. “Yusuf,” he says.

“You know, your messages are rather vague and come across as slightly sinister.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything to that, but the corners of his mouth tick up ever so slightly. Yusuf barrels on. “And I had to figure out how to find your number in this new damn phone. Do you know that I called three people before reaching you? I don’t have any contacts stored in here properly.”

“That is not my fault,” Arthur replies. “And you know how often I change numbers, so don’t give me that story about having to sort through your phone. Half your clients are on burners.”

“Mmm,” Yusuf hums. “So what is it that you called for?” His voice is muffled, slightly distorted like he’s pinned the phone to his shoulder and is using his hands elsewhere. It has to be near six in Mombasa, so he’s either mixing up anesthetics or stirring dinner. “Not Somnacin, I would imagine, seeing as you haven’t purchased from me since the Fischer job, and rumor has it that you’ve retired.”

“The rumor is that I lost my mind.”

“Semantics. Shall we discuss what it is you need? I doubt this is a friendly call.”

Arthur frowns, but doesn’t deny the truth in Yusuf’s words. “Have you heard from Eames recently?”

Yusuf scoffs. “Eames hasn’t said a word to me since the Fischer job, even when he’s been in the area. I take it he took quite the offense to being drugged that heavily without his knowledge. Can’t blame him. I do know how to ruin good business relationships.” His tone isn’t sarcastic or self pitying and Arthur respects that.

“Friendships too,” Arthur says anyway, because even a little respect doesn’t dissipate the anger Arthur still holds towards Yusuf for lying and risking all of their lives.

Yusuf hums again in subdued agreement. “I haven’t heard from him personally, but his name has been popping up recently and not in a good way. I don’t tend to believe any gossip I hear about Eames; he often fabricates the stories himself. But these have been consistent, verified by several sources in some cases. Should I be worried about him?”

Yusuf is fishing for information while giving his own. He is looking for an explanation. Arthur doesn’t have a good one to give. A small part of him feels guilty over driving Eames away, but surely he can’t be blamed for Eames’ seemingly self destructive behavior.

“I don’t know,” Arthur replies. It’s the truth. “I’ll let you know if i dig anything up.”

***

It only takes Arthur three days to track Eames down to a job in Podgorica. This is despite the fact that Eames has jumped cities so many times, burned through many identities. He’d be proud that he’s finally back on his game but after making a few calls he’s scrambling to book a flight to Shkodra. 

His phone is tucked under his chin on another call as he packs his bag . Leaving a note on the table, Arthur takes the keys to the rental and buys a prepaid phone at a convenience store on the way to the airport. He’ll leave the car in short-term parking. Dom should be able to drive Ariadne out to get it. He pockets his old SIM card after transferring a couple numbers he scrounged up in the last few hours. He’s dressed in a suit on the hope that he can find more solid information by the time he lands in Albania.

The wait at the airport is filled with more calls and he can feel the frown etching into his face, a permanent scowl as his fingers tick over the keys of his laptop as he searches. Eames disappeared a week ago. Arthur quickly connects the job to the Xhakja clan of the Albanian Mafia. He curses under his breath at Eames’ idiocy in accepting a job extracting from one of the members. 

“You don’t extract on the mafia, you idiot, only for them,” he mutters. He can feel the woman sitting next to him stare but he ignores her until she later moves away.

By most accounts and his own very little experience, the clan will be more than willing to let him go—for a price. He keeps working on the fragile hope that he’ll make it in time.


	19. Shattered Beneath Your Fingers

Eames comes to, eyes blinking open to a dimmed but still too-brightly lit room. He immediately turns and vomits onto the floor. His head is pounding, throbbing so hard behind his eyes that they feel like they are going to pop out of his head. He feels wretched, bleary and blurred as if he’s looking through a fist tank. But he notices through his confusion that he isn’t tied up anymore. This means he’s already in a holding area, a cell or room of some sort, and it means he doesn’t know how long he’s been passed out for. It could have been days.

Continuing to wretch, he feels a hand press to his back, rubbing in slow circles. Someone is murmuring soothing words next to him but he can’t quite make sense of them. They sound like gibberish, jumbled vowels and pitches until he catches up to consciousness. His limbs struggle to fight, to put up any defense that he can. He doesn’t know if he can overpower whoever it is, or where the exit is, or where in the world he is if he does get out, but it’s instinctual for him to struggle.

“Okay, Eames, it’s okay.”

The voice clarifies into the familiar timbre that haunts his dreams. For a second, he thinks he probably _is_ dreaming. He’s could be hallucinating as a coping mechanism to escape whatever horror Weiss is certainly inflicting upon his body at this very moment. Maybe he’s actually hooked up to a PASIV right now. He wonders how many levels down they have to be for his projection to appear immediately. 

But his projection has never been this sharp, has always been a shade away from the real Arthur. Maybe it’s his last vision, like his life flashing before his eyes and all he gets is teasing memories.

“Am I dying?” he slurs.

“No, you’re not dying, you idiot. You have a concussion,” the voice says with such familiar humor that Eames aches at the sound of it. It’s is no longer detached but instead clearly coming from a figure that is growing less and less fuzzy as Eames’ eyes focus.

And of course he isn’t dying or dreaming. Why would he dream himself in a room he’s never seen, and in so much pain? Sure, pain can be inflicted in dreams but nausea and headache upon waking are not usual signs of being dropped into one’s subconscious. And he and Arthur seem to be the only ones in the room.

Eames wretches once more into the bin that Arthur has dutifully handed to him at some point. After gasping for a second he feels steady enough to ask an actual pertinent question, “Weiss?”

Arthur answers swiftly, “That was me. You’re safe. But if you get worse, we’re going to the hospital, which anyone can find us at.”

Eames nods, then wishes he hadn’t with the way the throb in his head intensifies. He closes his eyes, trying to figure out how much time he’s lost. He imagines he was knocked out in the evening It’s day now judging by the sun doing it’s best to circumvent the closed curtains. They’re in a hotel of some sort. His vomit is sinking into the carpet next to the bed.

He’s not dead and he’s no longer in captivity.

When he opens his eyes, Arthur is holding out two pills and a glass of water. Eames takes them carefully, downing the entire glass.

“You’ll need something to eat,” Arthur says. “The food in this place is shit. But they’ll probably have some bread, or a pastry or something.”

“What are you doing here, Arthur?” Eames asks.

His question sounds accusatory to his own ears and he flinches when Arthur looks away with lips tightly pursed. After a moment, Arthur answers quietly but with conviction. 

“We’re going to get you some food, get you out of this country and feeling better. And when I think you’re out of danger of suffering any sudden memory loss, we’re going to talk.”

***

Eames wakes up at the end of an hour-long car ride at Podgorica Airport, and after awkwardly shuffling through rental car return, he follows Arthur as he strolls towards the ticket counters purposefully. Eames has no bags, nothing of value on him, not even a passport. Arthur doesn’t seem to mind and it’s all Eames can do to keep up by slipping on the veneer of a companion traveler as he lets Arthur take care of their flight. He’s surprised when Arthur pulls out two passports and brushes against Eames in an overtly friendly way. He would not choose to pretend as a gay couple in Montenegro normally, but a cover as a couple does explain his lack of luggage and why Arthur would be carrying around a passport for him.

The counter attendant professionally ignores them as he processes their tickets. In very little time they are both sitting in the uncomfortable chairs near their flight gate. In three hours they will be in London.

It feels surreal, sitting next to Arthur, leaning against an artificial leather armrest as Arthur finishes some work on his laptop. It’s almost like old times, so close that Eames keeps thinking he really might be dreaming after all. But every time he tries to shift into another skin he fails.

He has so many questions but refuses to voice them for fear of shattering the moment, the tiniest bit of normalcy he’s felt in so very long. People mill about them with luggage in tow. Parents try to keep their children from running off; men in suits chat into their mobile phones, and Arthur ticks away on his keyboard.

After fidgeting in his chair for more than twenty minutes, Eames finally breaks. 

“What are we doing, Arthur?” he asks. “What are you doing here? Help me understand, because I can’t think of a single reason for us to be sitting here right now.” 

He gestures to the airport at large, but what he means is how they are together, breathing the same air, within each other’s eyesight. All things he’d considered lost to him.

Arthur finishes his typing and then closes the lid of his laptop, sliding it off of his lap and into his bag. Turning in his chair to face Eames, his mouth twists to the side and he gazes at the floor while he obviously gathers his thoughts.

“I trust you,” Arthur says

All of the air is sucked out of Eames lungs and his eyes narrow skeptically. He starts to rub his upper lip with his thumb, a nervous gesture he’s in no state of mind to control. His heart hammers in his chest, questions bubble in his mind, but he stays quiet.

“But my subconscious doesn’t trust you,” Arthur continues.

Eames feels like his diaphragm has been kicked in, that claustrophobic sense of panic. That briefest moment of hope was just enough to make him vulnerable, to allow in the pain he’s been desperately fighting off for months. 

Arthur looks up from the floor. “But _I_ trust you,” he says. “It’s complicated, and fucked up. Rationally, I trust you. I trust you with my life, with Ariadne’s life. I trust you with Phillipa and James. But I can’t help being afraid of you and what you did to me.”

Arthur pauses for a moment, and Eames lets him. He wouldn’t know what to say anyway. He wonders if his face is holding his carefully crafted and time-tested inscrutability. It certainly doesn’t feel like it. It feels like he’s boiling underneath his skin, all anticipation and fear.

Arthur looks down at his shoes again. “You know, I would have never _ever_ thought of you as someone safe. But once I lost faith in you, I lost faith in everything: myself, my sanity, my friends. That’s not healthy, Eames.”

“You were stable when Cobb wasn’t. You had always been there, even when we barely knew each other. Of all the people I would have never guessed would betray me, you were the top of my list. And you are not at the top of anyone’s list.” The smile Arthur gives is somewhat bitter, but there is fleeting amusement in it.

“But I’m not blaming you. I wasn’t stable. I didn’t let myself realize how much Mal’s death shook me, shook my belief in dreaming. Cobb didn’t know what was real anymore. Do any of us really?” 

He looks at Eames then, possibly for an answer. But Eames can’t speak. He can’t find his voice. His throat feels swollen, his tongue heavy. Arthur continues anyway.

“Every way I play the situation, you did the right thing. You trusted me to understand, to know it was just a dream, just the job. I let you down.”

And that does get Eames to reply. It sounds raw, like it’s being ripped from his throat. “No. Arthur, I should have never—”

“Don’t.” Arthur commands. His eyes close, hand outstretched in warning, a physical reaffirmation of his words. It is forceful and though Eames wants to argue, he respects it. With all his heart he never wants Arthur to think that what happened as anyone’s fault but his own.

“It took me a long time to recognize that I’m in control. I’m in control of how my life plays out. And if I’m in control, then the things happen to me—that aren’t even real. It’s not even real. They can’t keep hurting me.” Arthur opens his eyes again and his gaze pierces Eames like a shard of ice through his heart.

“So I’m sorry that I pushed you away. I’m sorry that I let you down.”

Eames swallows. “Arthur, you have never in all the time I have known you let me down.”

They sit in an uncomfortable silence as the airport bustles around them. Eames’ leg jumps up and down as he taps his foot. Arthur’s elbows rest on his knees, leaning forward over the carpet.

“I didn’t want to, you know.” Eames says, quietly, regretfully. He wants to say _I thought about killing you quickly, but it would compromise the mission,_ but he doesn’t want to make excuses. He knows it is his fault, even if Arthur is blaming himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” Arthur says. Eames flinches. “It can’t be undone. But I think we can deal with this.”

Arthur holds out his hand, hovering just above Eames’ thigh. Eames hesitates, but he places his hand in Arthur’s and feels Arthur’s fingers curl around it. It’s warm, comforting, and something settles inside of him, though he’s worried that it shouldn’t. They sit like that, until their plane starts to board. During the flight, Eames learns every callus on Arthur’s hand, every vein, and the lay of every tendon. He commits it to memory, forever locked away. He doesn’t know how long he has to enjoy it.


	20. The Consequences of Trust

Arthur traces over the calluses on Eames’ hand, running the tips of his fingers over evidence of years of handwork as they drive through the city. Every forger’s tool has left its mark on these hands. There are violent remnants etched in as well: a thin scar from an attacker’s blade, a broken pinky from a long ago bar fight, and the thicker skin on the pad of Eames’ trigger finger.

Arthur knows a lot about Eames’ history: where Eames grew up, his mother’s maiden name, the boarding school he was sent off to after getting caught stealing for the first time in his life. He knows about Eames’ brief military service, and even briefer search for his real father. He knows so many little things that make up the man Eames is. 

It’s startlingly different to get to know someone without rifling through the documents of their life. Not that Arthur hadn’t before, but there are things he could never know about Eames simply by researching from afar. 

Eames knows a significant amount of his history now as well. 

When they make the turn into the parking lot, Eames’ hand sliding along the leather grip of the wheel, the sun breaks past the car’s visor and Arthur is temporarily blinded. He turns his face, squinting, and sees Eames’ silhouette edged by the golden afternoon light.

Eames is wearing a light blue shirt that brings out the green flecks in his eyes. His hair is fashionably messy, and he’s gained a little of the weight he’d lost during his self destructive bender. Arthur is suddenly overwhelmed by how beautiful Eames is, and how close he came to losing him forever. Eames finally parks the car and kills the engine, turning in his seat to look at Arthur.

“Ready?” he asks. 

Arthur tugs at Eames’ hand, pulling as he leans forward to press a kiss to Eames’ full lips. Eames is instantly responsive, parting his mouth and licking lightly along Arthur’s lip. His hand slides up Arthur’s arm to his shoulder, pausing for approval before continuing to wrap around the back of Arthur’s neck.

“We’re going to be late,” Eames whispers when he breaks the kiss. Arthur smiles and pops the handle on the door.

Dr. Steffe takes her seat across from them when they’re finally seated, hooking her ankles together and tucking them under her chair. She opens her notebook, flipping through a few pages before asking, “Eames, Arthur, how are we doing today?”

Arthur takes Eames’ hand between both of his own, laying it on his thigh. “We’re well,” he says as he toys with Eames’ shirt cuff. Eames’ eyes are smiling as he watches Arthur fidget.

“That’s wonderful. How have you _been_ doing? It’s been almost three months since I’ve seen you last. Have you had any incidents since then?” she asks.

“No,” Arthur answers.

Dr. Steffe smiles brightly, and quickly writes something down. “That makes it a year since that last time. I assume the coping techniques we talked about are working well?”

“Yes, but I’ve been having less reaction to triggers as well.”

“That’s fantastic, Arthur. Do you want to talk about anything specific that’s happened lately? Is there anything you feel you need my help with?”

Arthur briefly looks at Eames, giving his hand a small squeeze. “Actually, I think we’re doing fine,” he says.

They leave the office and drive a short distance to their new flat. Winter makes the temperature mild but the evening sun is still bright as they drive. Los Angeles is huge, but they’re only a short drive away from Dom’s house in Pasadena. They have dinner there every Sunday. Ariadne has long since moved back to Paris with Wild, but she promises to visit soon.

When they park the car and enter the flat, Arthur turns. They do this after almost every session. It’s like a victory celebration of sorts. Each month with no setbacks, Arthur pulls Eames into a kiss and then into the bedroom.

Eames lets Arthur control the pace. Sometimes Arthur strips him quickly, sometimes he takes his time. This time, he pulls both Eames’ and his own shirt off before pushing Eames onto the bed. He divests Eames of his shoes, belt, and pants, then climbs on top of Eames, settling by straddling Eames’ and sitting himself right on top of Eames’ crotch. Eames wiggles and bucks, showing appreciation of Arthur’s weight on top of him. Arthur can feel him growing hard, rubbing against the fabric of Arthur’s trousers.

Arthur grabs Eames’ hand and places it on the bed above his head. He does the same with the other, holding Eames’ wrists together as he bends down, bracing his weight with his other arm. Eames doesn’t fight the hold. Sometimes they have to stop if Eames struggles too much, if he gets too greedy, and Arthur feels like he’s losing the upper hand. They figured out early on that it’s better if Eames is below, never pinning Arthur down.

Arthur bends down and breathes right on Eames’ lips, hovering just out of reach. Eames could lift his head and kiss Arthur, has done before. But this time he stays still. He lets Arthur slowly drop closer until their mouths press together and Arthur bites at his lips. Eames opens them obediently. He licks across Arthur’s teeth before Arthur’s tongue overpowers it, fighting, searching the inside of his mouth. 

Arthur shifts his hips and Eames’ answering groan echos into the cavern of his mouth. Arthur smiles, biting Eames’ lips as he rolls his hips again.

“Tease,” Eames whispers. 

He lets Eames’ wrists go then, and Eames very carefully draws them forward, touching Arthur’s shoulders first and waiting for permission to move on. Arthur continues to roll his hips. And he can tell from Eames’ deepset look of concentration, that he’s just barely able to hold still. He traces fingers down Arthur’s shoulder blades to the dip of his spine, until they rest on Arthur’s hips.

Arthur sits up, increasing the pressure from his weight. His hands are on Eames’ chest, rubbing through the hair there and over the tattoo above his nipple. Arthur sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, biting it before curving down to suck Eames’ nipple into his mouth. He gives it a little bite that is just a touch too hard.

“Oi,” Eames gasps, admonishingly. 

Arthur smirks at him when he sits back up. “Sit tight,” he says before he crawls off the bed.

The front of Arthur’s trousers is tented obscenely, and Eames watches hungrily as Arthur unbuttons his fly, pulling them down. Arthur steps out of his shoes and the pile of clothes.

“Top or bottom?” he asks as he opens the drawer beside the bed to pull out a tube of lubricant and a condom.

“No preference,” Eames says. It’s rarely he says otherwise, neither of them able to tell if it’s one of the days that Arthur will feel strongly about the choice when the moment arises.

Arthur hums noncommittally, then crawls onto the bed. His cock bobs with his every movement. He can tell by the way Eames’ mouth parts that Eames would love nothing more than for Arthur to straddle his chest and shove his cock into his mouth, to suck Arthur down until Arthur is a trembling, gasping mess. Eames has said as much before. 

But Arthur is in a bit of a hurry today, riding the high of good news, of a good session, of a strong outlook on the future. He straddles Eames’ thighs instead, taking Eames’ prick in his hand and stroking up and down a few times before pulling Eames’ foreskin back. He leans down again and swirls his tongue around the tip, suckling for the briefest second before letting Eames’ cock drop back flat against his stomach with a smack.

“Oh you really are a bloody tease today,” Eames laughs. 

Arthur tears the condom wrapper open and then slips the rubber onto Eames dick, squeezing mercilessly at the base of his cock when he has it rolled the all the way down. He grabs the lube and slicks the condom before squirting a little more onto his fingers. Leaning forward with his neck bared, collarbones just out of reach to kiss, Arthur reaches back and fingers himself open. 

“Arthur, let me, please,” Eames pleads. His hands rub along Arthur’s body, but he doesn’t reach for more. Arthur shakes his head.

“You’ll just take your sweet time,” he says on breathy exhale.

He closes his eyes and efficiently works himself on his fingers. His body feels warm. He knows he’s flushing red down his neck and chest, that he’s starting to sweat. Eames gently pulls him down into a filthy kiss. Arthur’s fingers slip out when Arthur balances himself on two arms to deepen it, drawn by the softness of Eames’ lips and the eagerness of his tongue. But then he pushes back, gives Eames’ cock a few strokes to deposit what lube is left on his hands, before repositioning himself above Eames’ hips.

Eames reaches between Arthur’s legs to hold the base of his cock steady. Arthur sinks down onto it inch by aching inch. Arthur’s mouth goes slack with pleasure, his eyes locking with Eames’. He squats lower then raises up again, repeats until he’s fully seated. Once there, Arthur places both of his hands on Eames chest and rocks himself on Eames cock. He bounces up and when he comes back down, Eames meets him with a small thrust.

The moan ripped from Arthur’s throat is sinful: deep, throaty, raw. Eames meets every downward movement with a jerk of his hips. Arthur takes a hand from where it was braced on Eames’ chest and wraps his fist around his own cock. He tugs at it as Eames fucks up into him, feels the sweat start to drip down his neck and chest. 

Then Arthur all but stops as his orgasm builds as the base of his cock. His muscles lock up as his hand works frantically at his cock. Eames tries to circle his hips but the entirety of Arthur’s weight pins him to the bed. 

Arthur comes. His breath jerks out in gasps and his hand slows but continues stroking until the last of his seed has dripped out onto Eames’ stomach and chest. His body shakes from sensitivity, he twitches whenever Eames moves below him. And then he lets Eames slide out of him as he flops over onto the bed. 

Eames strips the condom off and rolls over until he’s pressed along Arthur’s side. He noses at Arthur’s neck as he lays on Arthur’s arm. Arthur watches as Eames starts rubbing the tip of his cock on Arthur’s hip, until he’s recovered enough to help Eames out. Arthur turns and replaces Eames’ hand with his own, jerking him off until Eames gasps and comes over Arthur’s hip.

They lie there in a wet, sated tangle, nearly drifting off into sleep. Arthur is the one who gets up for a towel. He wipes himself clean before handing the towel to Eames who does the same. When Eames is done, Arthur tosses the towel back into the laundry bin and collapses back onto the bed.

“A whole year,” Eames murmurs when Arthur snuggles up next to him. “Congratulations.”

Arthur smiles, his eyes already shut. He squirms again to get a little more comfortable as he wraps an arm over Eames’ middle. They fall asleep in their room, on their bed, in their flat. Arthur had thought it wasn’t possible to be happy again. He thanks his lucky stars he was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's over! Well, that took forever, but I promised I'd never leave a posted WIP unfinished.


End file.
